Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.
I wasn’t sure whether to do this this week — whether folks might still be away or occupied for the holidays. There aren’t too many who participate as it is. But I decided to just go ahead, and whoever is around and able to do so can jump in.
It’s been a busy week, yet a few quotes caught my eye, and because there are so many, I won’t add commentary to them:
From a friend’s Facebook:
“The difference between the non-Christian and the Christian is the difference between a Christmas tree on which people hang presents, and a living tree that bears fruit. They have to put them on the Christmas tree; it does not and cannot produce anything. But in the case of the growing tree…it is something produced from the life, the sap and the power that are in the living tree.” ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones
From Elisabeth Elliot’s Keep a Quiet Heart, the chapter on “The Mother of the Lord”:
It is not an extraordinary spirituality that makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary–which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit.
From Chris Anderson at My Two Cents on Ill-Used Illustrations:
From Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie, p. 29:
The truth is, we can never fully take in or understand God’s greatness. But we can magnify Him. We magnify God not by making Him bigger than He truly is, but by making Him greater in our thoughts, in our affections, in our memories, and in our expectations. We magnify Him by having higher, larger, and truer thoughts of Him. We magnify Him by praising Him and telling others about His greatness so they can have bigger thoughts about Him, too.
From Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, several essays on various aspects of Christmas, compiled by Nancy Guthrie, this is from the chapter “Good News of Great Joy” by Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., p. 100:
Our good intentions are not strong enough to control our evil impulses. We need a Savior to rescue us from ourselves. And God, with great understanding and compassion, has given us what we most deeply need — a Savior in Jesus Christ.
If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.
And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!
Stray Thoughts 
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I hope it’s okay–I linked to a book review in which I included a quote.
Have a great day, Barbara!
Sure, that’s very much okay!
The Chris Anderson quote steps on my toes. I’ve noticed at my own church how people get quiet and attentive when our preacher is relaying a personal story, but when it’s over, they get noisy again.
The Raymond Ortlund quote is so true. Too often I try to depend on my own self-control to “be good”—but that’s not enough. I need a Savior!
The quotes I used on my blog were part of a book review too. Sorry it’s so lengthy.
I love that Martyn Lloyd-Jones quote. It is simultaneously exalting and humbling to consider that we can produce REAL fruit (not just pretty ornamentation), but that said fruit comes not from ourselves but from Christ in us who has made us alive with Him.
From my Pastor on Christmas Eve:
Santa gives you what you want; Jesus gives you what you need.
Wow, that first quote is powerful!
Hope you are having a great post-Christmas week so far.
Our pastor is a remarkably good speaker and it is as usually as easy to listen to his explanation of scripture as it is to listen to his anecdotes. Of course, Pastor keeps our attention (and tickles our humor) by putting things in very plain and well-known terms, for instance, he calls David’s nephews “knuckle-heads”. Little things like that tend to keep one “tuned in”.