_{The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
~ Blaise Pascal}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945, theologian, author

~~~~~~~~~ Matthew 13:44-46 ~~~~~~~~~

Screwtape writes his nephew and says, “I have some ideas on how you can destroy your human’s budding spiritual interest.” This is what he says.
“Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. […] Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.”
~ C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963. British writer

The secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are… and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this.
~ Anne Lamott, 1954- , American writer

Does the Gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus? Would those who believe it become his apprentices as a natural “next step”? What can we responsibly expect would result from people actually believing the substance of my message?
~ Dallas Willard, 1935-2013, American philosopher

But the rub of revelation is that it’s a transformation you’re not in charge of.
~ Scott Erickson, performance storyteller

The transformation from water to wine is of course meant by John to signify the effect that Jesus can have, can still have today, on people’s lives.  He came, as he says later, that we might have life in all its fullness.  You might want to pray through this story with your own failures and disappointments in mind – remembering that transformation only came when someone took Mary’s words seriously: Do whatever he tells you.
~ N.T. Wright, 1948- , former Bishop of Durham

_{^{Until you have given up your “self” to Him
you will not have a real self.
~ C.S. Lewis}}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

~~~~~~~ Matthew 16:21-27 ~~~~~~~

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better answer he has, the more of a person he is.
~ Thomas Merton, 1915-1968, Theologian, Trappist monk

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious—all my achievements meant nothing in God’s economy. No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure—that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation—being sent to prison—was the beginning of God’s greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.
~ Charles Colson, 1931-2012, taken from Loving God

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.
~ Arthur W. Pink, 1886-1952, English theologian

The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self. The most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daily living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, and our peculiar temperaments—our inward affairs of every kind—these are the things that perplex and worry us more than anything else, and that bring us oftenest into bondage and darkness.In laying off your burdens, therefore, the first one you must get rid of is yourself. You must hand yourself and all your inward experiences, your temptations, your temperament, your frames and reelings, all over into the care and keeping of your God, and leave them there. He made you and therefore He understands you, and knows how to manage you, and you must trust Him to do it.
~ Hannah Whitall Smith, 1832-1911, author, speaker in Holiness Movement

Most often, the proudest person in the room is hiding the most fear.
~ Unknown