Thanksgiving is an attitude that must be rooted in the gift of life if we ever hope to be thankful for the gifts of life.
Greed are the handcuffs and gratitude is the key. Sadly, sometimes we prefer wearing the cuffs to finding the keys.
Having lived with nothing is the gift that allows me to appreciate the privilege of having everything.
To refuse to be thankful is to incessantly focus on the few things that I don’t have at the expense of the many things that I do.
If I am not thankful for the tree that stands in front of me, I will never see the forest that stands around me.
Self-care always translates to other-care unless I’m so selfish that I don’t care. And if that’s the case, then neither matter.
If the bridge of communication is solid, then they’ll never be too much water under the bridge that lays upstream.
To ask what the limits of our imagination are suggests that we firmly believe in limits, but we don’t have much faith in imagination.
Risk is the bedfellow of vision. Therefore, if your vision has no risk, neither were ever in the house.
If you wonder why you haven’t climbed the mountain, it’s probably because you’ve spent too much time trying to find the perfect shoes.
Talking about doing great things and not actually doing them makes a mockery of great things and a fool of the person who’s doing all the talking.
If the first thing that we’ve chosen to do is to calculate the cost, we’ve already betrayed the dream.
Dreaming without doing is a lot like a plane without wings. It might gaze at the sky, but it will know nothing other than runway.
Comfort is not the place where great dreams die. Rather, it is the place where they were never given the chance to be born.
Many people like to toss around ideas. But most of them are afraid of actually reaching out and catching one.
A father is the man who can change a world he will not be part of by building the tiny human that is part of him.
To be strong I must first admit that I am weak. And that requires some of the greatest strength imaginable.
My focus is not on the flood that surrounds me. Rather, my focus is on the God who surrounds the flood.
Bravery without vision is a loose cannon, and vision without bravery is a search for a cannon. But put both together, and you have an armada.
It’s not about getting tired, as that’s inevitable. Rather, it’s about giving up once we’re tired, because that’s not inevitable.
Maybe it’s not about breaking your shackles at all. Maybe it’s about making you bigger than anything that would ever try to shackle you ever again.
I believe that the healing for everything that’s ever been broken in my life was on its way long before the brokenness thought that it had its way.
I might have my holes, but the healing of today means that they will be smaller in every tomorrow, including the one that is now only hours away.
Ministry is about changing the world by transforming the people within it, not by giving them some sort of emotional sedative.
Peace as rumor and hope as the stuff of myth is the manifestation of the person who cannot see beyond the short horizon of circumstance.
Easter is the brazen declaration that there is nothing that we can destroy that need remain destroyed.
Love both wounds deeply and heals powerfully. And we dare not allow the wounds to crush our belief in the healing.
The greatest blessings arise when we reject the lesser blessings of men so that we are never dulled to the infinitely greater blessings of God.
In the end, the only thing that a life unreclaimed by God can claim is that it has nothing to claim despite claims to the contrary.
If I never sit in the living rooms of people’s lives, I am entirely unable to lead them out of the house.
Tomorrow will not be based on those who lead us. Rather, it will be based on what we demand of those who lead us.
It doesn’t take much to change your life, except everything that you have. That’s why so few people do it when every person actually could.
Transformation that is neither fiercely turbulent nor inordinately frightening is not transformation.
Easter does not change history. Rather, it transforms what history does to us and what the future can do for us.
When you change you are illustrating the fact that it can be done. And what people need today are illustrations.
There is no greater way to destroy the negative rhetoric in our culture than to consistently live out a greater good.
If all that you do with the fact that you’re here is to be here, no one will ever notice your absence at the point that you are not.
The main barrier to our belief that life can be better is our belief that someone else is supposed to do it.
Altering the perception of the 'reality' is a denial of both the reality and my inability to alter it.
Don’t think for a minute that you can’t change your world. For if you believe that you cannot, you have come to believe in who you are not.
If the space that you take up is the sum total of the space that you influence, you have wasted your space while robbing all of the other spaces.
Not a day goes by that did not have a great opportunity packaged in it somewhere. And the question is, did the opportunity go by with the day?
I don’t want to waste my time winning an election. Rather, I want to invest my time in changing the world.
The best gifts are those that leave something in the heart of the recipient long after the gift has left their hands.
I’m not looking for a better world. Rather, I’m looking for better men who refuse to let the world be anything but better.
One of the greatest feats of bravery is to acknowledge the presence of cowardice, but to refuse the possibility of surrender.
The people who believe that ethics, morals, and values are the product of a by-gone era are the very people for which that by-gone era existed.
The exercise of faith is to risk moving beyond the logic of men and in doing so realizing that the real risk would have been not to move.
My focus is never on the storm. Rather, my focus is on the next step that I will take into the storm.
If the amount of times we get up is just one less than the amount of times that we've been knocked down, then we're spending our lives lying down.
Might it be that I chose to invest my life in something ‘good’ so that I could avoid the fear of investing in something ‘great?
Maybe the best way to think about something in a ‘new’ way is to believe enough in what we already know to actually act on it.
It is not the presence of fear that bothers me. Rather, it is the cowardice within me that refuses to face the fear. That is what bothers me.
The hallmark of all great journeys is the decision to walk directly into that which we would otherwise seek to escape.
This isn’t the last time that you’re going to get knocked down, so don’t make it the last time that you’re going to get up.
Many times in life it’s not about turning on the light. Rather, it’s about refusing to pull the shades.
It is natural to doubt. It is part of our humanity to fear. But the greater part of us is that which doubts both and fears neither.
Weeds are the things that choose to be persistent despite the reality that they’re going to get pulled.
Despite how crowded it might be, you can always find a seat on the sidelines of life. However, not all empty seats should be sat in.
I would wonder if one of the greatest acts of bravery is to admit that we are not, but to act the part anyway.
Many of the advances that we make in the battles that we’re fighting today will be evidenced in the battles that we won’t have to fight tomorrow.
To stay down in whatever place I was last knocked down is to decide that life is done long before it is done.
It doesn’t matter what’s coming at us. God defeated it before it ever left wherever it was coming from.
I have defined victory not by the outcome of any battle, but by the integrity with which I fought the battle.
Even if yesterday was wildly successful, I still don’t want to repeat it. Rather, I want to build on it.
Intelligence and wisdom are certainly compatible, however they are rarely seen in each other’s company.
Sometimes I am so desperately worn by life that I want nothing more than to hear a robin call out into the darkened chill of life’s morning. And I need that as its call assures me that the soothing warmth of spring is hot on winter’s chilled heels. And so
