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.

Here are a few that stood out to me this week:

Seen in Claudia Barba’s Monday Morning Club e-mail:

“Damage is easier to prevent than to repair.”

That is so applicable in so many areas!

Seen at girltalk:

“They that love God as they ought, will have such a sense of his wonderful long-suffering toward them under the many injuries they have offered to him, that it will seem to them but a small thing to bear with the injuries that have been offered to them by their fellow-men.” ~ Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, p.78.

This concept, also seen in the parable of the servant who would not forgive a lesser debt after being forgiven a great debt, usually melts whatever resistance I have against forgiving someone. As long as I am focusing on what they did, my heart remains hard against them, but when I remember God has forgiven me so much more than I’ve done against Him, so much more than anyone else could ever do to me, I have no grounds to withhold forgiveness to anyone else.

Seen at Diane‘s Facebook:

“Prayer is the place where burdens change shoulders.”

From The Old Guys:

When you sailors see the haven before you, though you were mightily troubled before you could see any land, yet when you come near the shore and can see a certain land-mark, that contents you greatly. A godly man in the midst of the waves and storms that he meets with can see the glory of heaven before him and so contents himself. One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world. ~ Jeremiah Burroughs

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Corinthians 4:17-18.

Also, for those who might not have seen it and might be interested, I shared several good quotes from Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job by Laytin Talbert in my review of the book here.

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

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.

From a friend’s Facebook:

“God’s solution is sometimes different. He does not always lift people out of the situation. He does not pluck them out of the darkness. He becomes the light in the darkness, the peace in the midst of the conflict….” Patricia St. John

Reminds me of a plaque I had some years ago that said something like, “Sometimes God stills the storm, and sometimes He stills His child in the midst of the storm.”

From Lisa‘s Twitter feed:

God’s self-exaltation is not because he’s incomplete without praise, but because we’re not complete without it. ~ John Piper

I mentioned some time back a professor bringing up a rhetorical question without really answering it and it causing me some problems for years. It was on this topic, and this quote helps immensely. I had come to that conclusion before, that God’s wanting our praise had more to do with our need of it than his desire for it, but I love the way Piper put it.

From another friend’s Facebook:

“Failure…the opportunity to start over again with more knowledge than you had before.”

One of the most valuable sermons I ever heard, one that has stuck with me for decades, was one in college having to do with failure. I wasn’t failing, but I was struggling more than I ever had and felt like I was failing, and of course have had many individual failures throughout life. It was such a blessing to know failure was not an end in itself.

And finally, from this blog which I discovered while searching for something else:

“We ought to give thanks for all fortune: If it is ‘good’ because it is good, if ‘bad’ because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.” ~ C.S. Lewis

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

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 just started reading Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World edited by C. J. Mahaney this week, am only 50 pages in, and have over ten quotes marked already.

Here are two from the foreward by John Piper:

The gospel makes all the difference between whether you are merely conservative or whether you are conquering worldliness in the power of the Spirit for the glory of Christ.

What does it look like when the blood of Christ governs the television and the Internet and the iPod and the checkbook and the neckline?… The only way most folks know how to draw lines is with rulers. The idea that lines might come into being freely and lovingly (and firmly) as the fruit of the gospel is rare (p. 11).

The last part of that second one is golden: too often people try to handle worldliness with rules, working from and on the external, rather than cultivating a heart after God which will then establish the “lines.”

The second is from the second chapter by Craig Cabaniss:

Glorifying God is an intentional pursuit. We don’t accidentally drift into holiness: rather, we mature gradually and purposefully, one choice at a time (p. 40).

If we’re “drifting,” it’s probably going to be in the wrong direction.

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

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.

Here are a few thought-provoking quotes that caught my eye this week:

From Robin Lee Hatcher‘s Facebook:

“Can an acorn become a rose, a whale fly like a bird, or lead become gold? Absolutely not. You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be everything God wants you to be.” ~ Max Lucado

Is anyone else as tired as I am of sayings like “You can do or be anything you want” and “If you can think it, you can do it”? This was a wonderful answer to those philosophies.

And another from Robin:

“As we grow in Christ, we will learn how to appreciate peace over personal preferences. Remember, Christ is the Prince of Peace.” ~ Beth Moore

Though a little different, this reminded me of a quote from a forgotten source that it is not surrender to the Lord that causes us problems and anguish, it is the struggle against surrender. As long as we cling to our own preferences, our own way and will, we won’t have that peace of fully yielding to Christ. So why, then, do we keep doing it?!

See at Chrysalis:

“The arts are the John the Baptist of the heart, preparing the affections for Christ.” ~ Jacques Maritain

And finally, from another friend’s Facebook:

“Revivals should not be necessary. God intended that His people should grow in grace & holiness without periodic spells of backsliding & repenting. But so long as we have such a malarial brand of Christianity, a fever & a chill, a fever & a chill, we shall need revivals.” ~ Vance Havner

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

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.

This was from Robin Lee Hatcher’s Facebook page:

“Fear of trials sometimes depletes more energy than facing trials!” Beth Moore

Isn’t that the truth?! I can waste so much time and energy on something that turns out not to be a problem after all.

And from John Piper’s Twitter feed:

After calming the sea [Jesus] said, “Why are you afraid?” Not because Christians never drown. But they are safe in drowning.

I’ve often thought that if ever there were a legitimate fear, being at sea in a storm was one, and yet Jesus questioned the disciples’ fear there. This gives insight as to why. Even if “the worst” happens — they would still be safe, as will we if we’re trusting in Jesus as Savior.

I shared this among my links on Saturday, but it was so good I wanted to mention it again in case anyone missed it. From the article We Need Boring Christians:

Many of us want to do something awesome, something epic. We tend to think that the more normal, the less ‘spiritual.’ So it is quite possible that our aspirations to be radical stem from dangerous ambitions to perform biography-worthy feats of global glory.

God does call some people some times to do something radical, something “epic,” but He also calls each of us to be faithful in everyday, “ordinary” life.

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

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 only have a couple this week. One I posted earlier in a review of Prince Caspian, but I couldn’t resist posting it again:

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”

This one came from an e-mail devotional of Elisabeth Elliot from a chapter titled “A Devious Repentance” in A Lamp For My Feet:

Recently I committed a sin of what seemed to me unpardonable thoughtlessness. For days I wanted to kick myself around the block. What is the matter with me? I thought. How could I have acted so? “Fret not thyself because of evildoers” came to mind. In this case the evildoer was myself, and I was fretting. My fretting, I discovered, was a subtle kind of pride. “I’m really not that sort of person,” I was saying. I did not want to be thought of as that sort of person. I was very sorry for what I had done, not primarily because I had failed someone I loved, but because my reputation would be smudged. When my reputation becomes my chief concern, my repentance has a hollow ring. No wonder Satan is called the deceiver. He has a thousand tricks, and we fall for them.

Lord, I confess my sin of thoughtlessness and my sin of pride. I pray for a more loving and a purer heart, for Jesus’ sake.

I’ve been there. You?

I’ve marked a few more from Beyond Suffering by Layton Talbert, but I think I might save those for when I review the book. It’s hard to wait to post them, though!

Also — I’ve been kind of thinking about discontinuing The Week In Words. I’ve hosted it about a year now, and most weeks there are only two or three of us who participate, though some weeks we have 4 and I think once or twice we’ve had as many was six. (I know some of you have been away lately, but I am thinking of the overall trend: it hasn’t really “taken off.”) But then it’s not really about numbers. Also, I think many people who don’t participate in it skip the post entirely (which is fine — I don’t always read or comment on every post of every blog I read, though I usually at least skim them). I’ve been going back and forth about it in my own mind for a few weeks now, and I decided to ask you what you thought. You can either vote in the poll or leave a comment, or both.

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 don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!