18 Quotes From Wise People In “15 Invaluable Laws Of Growth”

15 Invaluable Laws of GrowthJohn Maxwell always shares great quotes in his books! This is the hallmark of a true servant leader, who doesn’t hoard what he reads or hears, nor is he concerned about getting all the credit. Here are some of the quotes I enjoyed from Maxwell’s book The 15 Invaluable Laws Of Growth.

“Character is a quality that embodies many important traits such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence, and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you were born with and can’t change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing.” —Jim Rohn

“I’ve concluded that while nobody plans to mess up their life, the problem is that a few of us plan not to. That is, we don’t put the necessary safeguards in place to ensure a happy ending.” —Andy Stanley

“I bless you, prison—I bless you for being in my life—for there lying on rotting prison straw, I learned the object of life is not prospering as I had grown up believing, but the maturing of the soul.” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self-defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battle ground of character.” —Senator Dan Coats

“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” —Abraham Maslow

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” —George Elliot

“A sign of wisdom and maturity is when you come to terms with the realization that your decisions cause your rewards and consequences. You are responsible for your life, and your ultimate success depends on the choices you make.” —Denis Waitley

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” —Viktor Frankl

“The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.” —Albert Schweitzer

“All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out.” —Albert Einstein

“It’s better to look uninformed than to be uninformed.” —Richard Thalheimer

“When average people ask themselves, ‘Can I do this?’ they base it on the circumstances they see. … An abundant thinker asks different questions. An abundant thinker asks, ‘How can I?’ This simple twist of semantics changes everything. It forces your mind to create a solution.” —Brian Klimmer

“It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership…. By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example.” —Gordon B. Hinckley

“Never confuse the giftedness of a person with the person. Their gifts allow them to do amazing things but the person may be flawed, which will eventually cause harm.” —Fred Smith

“Great things happen whenever we stop seeing ourselves as God’s gift to others, and begin seeing others as God’s gift to us.” —James S. Vuocolo

“Your doubts are not the product of accurate thinking, but habitual thinking. Years ago you excepted flawed conclusions as correct, begin to live your life as if those warped ideas about your potential were true, and ceased the bold experiment in living that brought you many breakthrough behaviors as a child.” —Price Pritchett

“If you send a rocket to the moon, about 90 percent of the time it’s off course—it ‘fails’ its way to the moon by continually making mistakes and correcting them.” —Price Pritchett

“Self-fulfillment thinks of how something serves me. Self-development thinks of how something helps me to serve others. With self-fulfillment, feeling good is the product. With self-development, feeling good is the by-product.” —Fred Smith

I have shared a lot of other content from this book:

Links & Quotes

link quote

“What we long to see and know is a Person Whose power is unlimited, Whose kindness is tender, and Whose purpose is single and unflinching. Novelists and poets and movie-makers and TV writers now and then create a shadow of this Person. But they can no more fill our longing to worship than this month’s National Geographic can satisfy my longing for the Grand Canyon. We must have the real thing. We must see the Original of all power and kindness and purposefulness. We must see and worship the risen Christ.” —John Piper

“Brethren, we have no right to thrust a brother into the ministry until he has first given evidence of his own conversion, and has also given proof not only of being a good average worker but something more. If he cannot labor in the church before he pretends to be a minister, he is good for nothing. If he cannot perform all the duties of membership with zeal and energy, and if he is not evidently a consecrated man whilst he is a private Christian, certainly you do not feel the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit to bid him enter the ministry. No man has a right to aspire to come into that office until he has shown that he is really devoted to Christ by having served Him as others have done.” —Charles Spurgeon

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. To be entertained is a passive state, it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence and appreciation.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel

Exactly right: The “prosperity” gospel creates poor Christians.

The messed-up thinking of Margaret Sanger that is still seen in Planned Parenthood’s practices today.

A good apologetic piece: Reasons to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Once again Murray Vassar gets it right…

Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 5.59.06 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 5.59.15 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 5.59.23 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 5.59.30 PM

Screen Shot 2015-08-23 at 5.59.39 PM

Speak out about abortion: check out the #callhimemmett campaign.

 

5 Quotes On Problem Solving From “Brain-Savvy Leaders”

Brain-Savvy LeadersCharles Stone’s book Brain-Savvy Leaders is chockfull of helpful information! When you understand more how your brain works, you can leverage its power more efficiently. Here are some quotes he shared about problem solving.

“Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” —Pope Paul VI 

“As a part of the C-system, the prefrontal cortex processes bits of information one after the other (serial) instead of several at the same time (parallel). … When we try to process too much information at once, the prefrontal cortex’s serial processing nature can result in mental processing bottlenecks that in turn can lead to unfinished thoughts and tasks. … When we attempt many mental tasks at once, our thinking degrades, accuracy drops, we focus on the urgent instead of the important, we forget things, and the quality of future decisions gets muddied.”

Coffee, caffeinated drinks (but not too many), exercise, and novelty can increase the amount of these neurotransmitters and get us into a more productive and focused state.”

“Charlan Nemeth, a psychology professor at the University of California-Berkeley, performed a creativity study in 2003. She divided 265 female students into groups of five and asked them to generate as many ideas as possible on how to decrease traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay area. Each team received one of three conditions and was given twenty minutes to complete the task. Either they used the traditional ‘no criticism’ brainstorming technique, or they generated as many ideas as possible but could debate and criticize each one, or they received no instructions. The ‘debate and criticize’ teams generated 20 percent more ideas than the other two groups. … Debate…adds the element of surprise that engages the brain.”

“When trying to solve problems, encourage your team to imagine themselves a year from now instead of imagining themselves tomorrow. Studies show that this time perspective fosters more creativity.”

You can read my book review of Brain-Savvy Leaders by clicking here.

I have also shared other quotes from this book on learning, brain health, and emotional health.

Are You Sickened Enough Yet?

MindAre you sickened enough yet by what Planned Parenthood is doing? How much more do you need to see before you will speak out?

Our politicians aren’t going to do anything unless they feel it’s “politically beneficial.” That is, if enough people call and email to tell them to defund Planned Parenthood—enough calls and emails to make them realize that re-election is at stake—then perhaps they will do the right thing.

This is the most appalling video from the Center For Medical Progress yet. I dare you to watch every stomach-churning minute of this video…

It’s clear that the mainstream media isn’t going to cover this. Mainly because they are getting awards from Planned Parenthood for not covering their barbaric, murderous practices.

But the Students For Life are doing something that can get noticed. If enough of us will share the #callhimemmett hashtag, we can make this a trending topic … we can push this to the forefront of every social media outlet.

Check this out—

Will you join me?

CallHimEmmett#callhimemmett

Links & Quotes

link quote

“Remember it is God, and not man, that must have the glory. It is not much speaking, but much faith, that is needed.” —Robert Murray McCheyne

“That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.” —Charles Spurgeon

Mark Atteberry asks a good question: “Aren’t we out-of-touch, narrow-minded, sexually-repressed Christians supposed to be the only ones who are bothered by rampant sexuality? Why, then, are these such big stories Jared Fogle, Ashley Madison, Larry Flynt], worthy of reporting on national newscasts?” Check out his post A Big Day For Sexual Sin.

Reminder: There is no such thing as free pornography. “The simple truth is that porn always costs us dearly, and it is never a victimless crime. Peer-reviewed research suggests that porn is highly addictive, negatively affects our behavior, and functionally operates as a destructive drug.”

Eric Metaxas shares some cool archeological findings about Jesus Christ’s hometown of Nazareth.

“Believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead is much more than accepting a fact. It means being confident that God is for you, that He has closed ranks with you, that He is transforming your life, and that He will save you for eternal joy.” —John Piper

On The Move!

I heart my churchJust about a year ago, I shared a message at Calvary Assembly of God called “The Church On The Move” (you can read a recap of that message here).

In this message I challenged our church that we needed to resemble the ministry of Jesus. Christ’s ministry was (1) mobile, (2) messy, and (3) meaningful. I said that in order for us to fulfill this, we couldn’t be tied to one piece of property that was six miles outside of town.

As the church prayed and sought God’s direction for this, He brought along a perfect buyer for our property on 17 Mile Road—2nd Chance School. It was a true win-win for both us and the school, and we praise God for bringing this all together!

Sunday, August 30, is our first week of being mobile. We will be meeting in Red Hawk Elementary school (you can access a map here) for our Sunday morning service.

This change of venue will allow us to be more accessible for ministry throughout the week, it will put us closer to the city we love, and it will free up finances to be able to go toward front-line ministries.

Please join us on August 30 at 10:30am as we move into our new meeting place. We are excited about the new ministry opportunities that God is going to bring our way!

If you would like to read more, please check out the Calvary Assembly of God press release we sent to the local newspapers.

Links & Quotes

link quote

“There is only one basic reason why we disobey the commands of Jesus: it’s because we don’t have confidence that obeying will bring more blessing than disobeying. We do not hope fully in God’s promise.” —John Piper

“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed.” —C.S. Lewis

Cedar Springs has annual worship service for all of the churches in the area to come together. We call it UNITED. Check out this post on loving as Christians.

“Hitler was successful not because of the righteousness of his cause, but because of the way it was packaged and sold to the public. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are successful for very similar reasons.” Read more about Planned Parenthood’s Big Lie.

How To End The Sin Of __________

C.H. SpurgeonCharles Spurgeon was addressing drunkenness in this passage, but what would happen if you filled in sin you are most prone to commit in these blanks…

“You cannot wipe out all the national iniquity, but if each man reformed himself of __________, by God’s grace, this great evil would cease. … Have you heard ringing in your ears the precept, ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy’? Has the Holy Spirit by His mighty grace kept you from indulging in __________? Have you in any way fallen into lightness of talk and thought, and so helped to increase the flood of __________? … Let us bow our heads in penitence, and seek the God of all grace.”

Heavenly Father, may I be more sensitive to the sin in my life than I am aware of the sin in the world. Amen.

11 Quotes From “A Sketch Of The Life And Labors Of George Whitefield”

A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George WhitefieldYesterday I tweeted…

And that’s definitely true in the book J.C. Ryle wrote: A Sketch Of The Life And Labors Of George Whitefield. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are some of the quotes I highlighted in this interesting biography.

“Informing your opinion of the comparative merits of Christian men, never forget the old rule: ‘distinguish between times.’ Place yourself in each man’s position. Do not judge what was a right course of action in other times, by what seems a right course of action in your own.”

“In the thirty-four years of his ministry, it is reckoned that [Whitefield] preached publicly eighteen thousand times. … No preacher has ever retained his hold on his hearers so entirely as he did for thirty-four years.”

“He seemed to live for only two objects—the glory of God, and the salvation of immortal souls. He raised no party of followers who took his name. He established no system, like Wesley, of which his own writings should be cardinal elements. A frequent expression of his is most characteristic of the man: ‘Let the name of George Whitefield perish, so long as Christ only is exalted.’” 

“He was a man of extraordinary catholicity and liberality in his religion. He knew nothing of that narrow-minded policy which prompts a man to fancy that every thing must be barren outside his own camp, and that his party has got a monopoly of truth on heaven. He loved all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. He measured all by the measure which the angels of God use —‘Did they possess repentance towards God, faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ, holiness of conversation?’ If they did, they were as his brethren. His soul was with such men, by whatever name they were called.”

“Whitefield preached a singularly pure gospel. Few men ever gave their hearers so much wheat and so little chaff. … This, you may be sure, is the corner-stone of all preaching that God honors. It must be predominantly a manifestation of truth.”

“To make easy things seem hard is easy, but to make hard things easy is the office of a great preacher.” —Archbishop Usher

“He is the best orator who can turn men’s ears into eyes.” —Arabian Proverb

“It was no uncommon thing with him to weep profusely in the pulpit. Cornelius Winter goes so far as to say that he hardly ever knew him to get through a sermon without tears.”

“Once become satisfied that a man loves you, and you will listen gladly to anything he has got to say. And this was just one grand secret of Whitefield’s success.”

“He founded no denomination among whom his name was embalmed, and his every act recorded, as did John Wesley. He headed know mighty movement against a Church which openly professed false doctrines, as Luther did against Rome. He wrote no books which were to be the religious classics of the millions, like John Bunyan. He was a simple, guileless man, who lived for one thing only, and that was to preach Christ. If he succeeded in doing that effectually, he cared for nothing else. He did nothing to preserve the memory of his usefulness. He left his work with the Lord.”

“The truth, I believe, is, that the direct good Whitefield did to immortal souls was enormous. I will go farther. I believe it is incalculable.” 

Links & Quotes

link quote

“Then and there, here and now, more and more: This is how we must think about the Kingdom of God and our involvement in it.” —T.M. Moore

“What is the meaning of God sending His own Son, if less than salvation was intended; if less than Incarnation will do, less than blood, less than death, less than resurrection? Oh let us understand the greatness of God’s provision for us, and in that greatness, read at once our death and our life, our condemnation and our deliverance.” —Horatius Bonar

David Wilkerson says, “It is one thing to speak with what we think of as authority—in a loud, boisterous voice, seeming to have total control. But in God’s kingdom, authority is something altogether different. It’s something you have, not something you simply speak.” Read more in his post The Authority Of Jesus.

Wise words from N.T. Wright when it appears God isn’t at work.

GREAT NEWS: Hilton Hotels & Resorts has officially announced a change in policy and will remove all on-demand pornographic videos from the in-room entertainment services at all of its properties worldwide.

Parents, here is a really good list of Scripture verses to help your children memorize as they head back to school.

TrumpToShakespeare_edit-01Info We Trust has a unique way of analyzing the data from the first GOP debate. I love this!

[VIDEO] Dennis Prager make 5 outstanding arguments about the morality of abortion—