As I said in my book review of Gary Thomas’s Cherish, this is a must-read for married couples, those about to be married, and those who counsel married couples. Please check out my review, and then enjoy a few quotes from this book.
“Learning to truly cherish each other turns marriage from an obligation into a delight. It lifts marriage above a commitment to a precious priority.”
“In one sense, love is the nurturing aspect of marriage, while cherish is the ‘tasting’ aspect of marriage. Love meets the need; cherish tickles the tongue.”
“If you want to be fully satisfied in your marriage, if you want your wife to feel cherished, then mentally treat your wife like Eve. Let her be, in your mind, in that way, the only woman in the world. Say with King Solomon, ‘My dove, my perfect one, is the only one’ (Song of Songs 6:9 ESV).”
“You’ve already made your choice. In your ideal world, you have no intention of ever starting over with someone else, so why not put your energy into and your focus on guarding that choice, building on the strengths of that choice, and making yourself ever more grateful that you made that choice?”
“At some point, if you want marital happiness, if you want to learn how to cherish a real man instead of longing for an imaginary composite, some ‘Frankenstein’ husband who somehow has it all, then you have to own your choice and even learn to cherish your choice. ‘My vineyard, my very own, is for myself’ (Song of Songs 8:12 NRSV).”
“The call to cherish isn’t to appreciate being pleasured by your spouse but to take pleasure in the pleasure of your spouse.”
“If we want to cherish our spouses, we must learn to take an active interest in what interests them.”
“Cherishing is expressed, or it’s not. Intimacy is built, or it is assaulted, even in the most mundane marital conversations.”
“The act of consistently noticing and honoring our spouses cultivates and maintains a certain kind of relationship, and it shapes our hearts. Noticing and honoring sustain the force and power of cherishing. When we stop noticing and stop honoring our spouses in the little things, the relationship starves.”
“Active cherishing—noticing and then expressing the excellence you see—is a way to shape our attitudes and to generate feelings of closeness and well-being. When we do what the Bible tells us to do, we will be doubly blessed—our spouses will be happier, increasing the joy in our marriages, and we’ll become happier psychologically as well. Cherishing our spouses literally makes us feel better. So cherishing means waging war on contempt and going on the offense with gratitude.”
I will be sharing more quotes from Cherish soon. If you’d like to be notified when these quotes are posted, simply enter your email address in the field in the right column and click “Sign me up!” You may also want to follow me on Twitter and Tumblr for other quality quotes I post every day.
Hal Donaldson makes the case that a revolution of kindness can be started by what you do in the next 24 hours. It’s a great book! Check out my review of Your Next 24 Hours by clicking here, and then enjoy some of these quotes that I found enlightening.
“Think of your heart as a bank vault that’s packed with the currency of love and kindness. When that currency is hoarded—it is wasted. But when it is invested in the lives of others, it pays great dividends. With each disbursement, you give others strength, hope, and value.”
“You have a unique capacity to bring hope and beauty to the world. Don’t waste your precious energy using the wrong ruler. Granted, not everyone will acknowledge your unique gifts. But don’t allow how others see you to dictate how you see yourself. The words they use to describe you don’t define you. You can’t control how they respond to you, but you can influence what they have to respond to.”
“If all you possess are two hands, collect trash along the way. If all you own is a smile, use it to befriend someone who is lonely. If all you have is an umbrella, share it with someone who is quivering in the rain. If all you have is a kind word, encourage those who think the world is against them. To the lonely, rain-soaked, and downtrodden, your resourcefulness is their miracle.”
“If enough families are built on a foundation of kindness, communities will see crime rates fall, domestic disputes decline, suicides drop, teen pregnancies wane, and cases of child abuse fade.”
“Whenever you see injustice, it’s safer to ignore it and do nothing. When you raise your voice in defense of others, you put yourself at risk. Retreating will protect you temporarily, but that approach only perpetuates more injustice and suffering. Don’t allow the threat of retaliation to make you a spectator.”
“From a heart of kindness, will you stand and say, ‘There are no second class citizens—nor should anyone be made to feel like one. Every life is precious to God and must be treasured, because “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”?’ Remember, your voice is a vote for justice; your silence may be interpreted as a vote for injustice.”
“To offer the right prescription of hope and encouragement, you need to be emotionally and spiritually prepared.”
“No life experience should be wasted, because crises teach patience, empathy, and perseverance.”
“Make it your goal to do more for your friends and family members than they do for you. When they are facing hardship, make an effort to be by their side. They may not know how to ask for help, so don’t be afraid to be proactive.”
“Occasional kindness has limited power. But relentless kindness has the power to restore, inspire, rescue, and unite.”
“Your acts of kindness are an outward expression of the love and happiness that are in your heart.”
I’ll be sharing more quotes from this wonderful book soon. To be notified right away when these quotes are posted, enter your email address to subscribe. Also be sure to follow me on Twitter and Tumblr, where I share quotes from Hal Donaldson and other thought-provoking people every day.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Happiness Or Holiness?
“Beauty” means the perfectly ordered completeness of man’s whole nature. When once a man’s mind is upset, that beauty begins to go, the equilibrium is upset. This accounts for the characteristic tendency abroad today: ignore sin, deny it ever was; if you make mistakes, forget them, live the healthy minded, open-hearted, sunshiny life, don’t allow yourself to be convicted of sin. …
Happiness means we select only those things out of our circumstances that will keep us happy. It is the great basis of false Christianity. The Bible nowhere speaks about a “happy” Christian; it talks plentifully of joy. … Happiness would be alright if things were reasonable; it would be ideal if there were no self-interest, but everyone of us is cunning enough to take advantage somewhere, and after a while my inclination is to get my happiness at your cost. …
What kind of peace had Jesus Christ? A peace that kept Him for thirty years at home with brothers and sisters who did not believe in Him; a peace that kept Him through three years of popularity, hatred, and scandal; and He says, “My peace I give unto you”; “let not your heart be troubled,” i.e., “see that your heart does not get disturbed out of its relationship to Me.”
But remember Jesus Christ has to upset the old equilibrium first. When a man is probed into by the Spirit of God, the waters of his conscious life get troubled and other ideas emerge. If I am going to follow the dictates of the Spirit of God and take up the attitude of Jesus Christ to things, it will produce an earthquake in my outlook. … “If you would be My disciple, says Jesus that is the cost.” …
Take up any attitude of Jesus Christ’s and let it work, and the first thing that happens is that the old order and the old peace go. You cannot get back peace on the same level. If once you have allowed Jesus Christ to upset the equilibrium, holiness is the inevitable result, or no peace forever (Matthew 10:34).
From The Shadow Of An Agony
Quite simply: I can live for my own happiness, or I can allow my “happiness” to be momentarily upset by allowing the holiness of God to reign in my heart.
Happiness eventually comes to an end, but holiness ultimately leads to the enjoyment of God forever!
The choice is yours: “IF you would be My disciple….”
In The Seven Laws Of Love, Dave Willis gives us some highly practical, biblically-based counsel for investing in all of our relationships. Normally when I share quotes from books, I share all of them at once, but I felt like it would be good to share these quotes a bit more slowly, to give you time to read them and apply them.
The seven laws Dave identifies are:
Dave writes in the introduction to his book, “God wants love to flow through our lives like a mighty river. The laws of love are the invisible banks God has placed around love for our prosperity and protection. When our relationships live with in those boundaries, everyone involved is enriched. When we dismiss or disregard the boundaries, our relationships can quickly become unhealthy and unsustainable.”
From law #1, here are some quotes on commitment—
“God created love to be a transformative force in every aspect of our lives. … Before that can happen, though, there must be commitment. Without a real commitment, there can be no real love.”
“The strength of your commitment will always determine the strength of your relationship.”
“God brought His own Son through the lineage of a poor young woman named Ruth who understood the power of commitment in the meaning of love. God wants to create a generational impact through your life as well. The level at which you’ll make an eternal impact is defined by your level of commitment to the people God has placed in your life.”
“Our commitment to others is evident in the consistency with which we serve them. Grand, one-time gestures can be nice, it’s what we do with consistency that will ultimately shape our relationships.”
“We’ve traded true intimacy for porn. We’ve traded committed marriages for commitment-free cohabitation. We’ve traded having children for having pets. We’ve traded meaningful conversations for text messages. We’ve traded ‘till death do us part’ for divorce. We’ve traded the pursuit of holiness for the pursuit of happiness. We’ve traded love for lust. We’ve attempted to exploit all the benefits and pleasures of love without investing the commitment and self-sacrifice that love requires.”
“Your life and your relationships will be defined by the commitments you make and how well you keep them.”
Check out my review of The Seven Laws Of Love by clicking here.
Watch for more quotes from the other laws of love explained in this book throughout the next few days.
“Prayer for your enemies (Matthew 5:44) is one of the deepest forms of love, because it means that you have to really want that something good happen to them. You might do nice things for your enemy without any genuine desire that things go well with them. But prayer for them is in the presence of God Who knows your heart, and prayer is interceding with God on their behalf.” —John Piper
“The only thing one can usually change in one’s situation is oneself. And yet one can’t change that either—only ask Our Lord to do so….” —C.S. Lewis
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” —C.S. Lewis
“The world is not looking for more doctrinal proof of the reality of God! It is not looking for greater proof of the resurrection or better arguments about creation. The world is looking for Christians who can stand up to every crisis, fear, trouble and difficulty and remain calm and at rest in the midst of it all. The world needs to see God’s children trusting wholly in their Lord.” —David Wilkerson
“I would then that the quickening Spirit would come down upon me, and upon you, upon every one of us in abundance, to create men valiant for truth and mighty for the Lord.” —Charles Spurgeon
I know I have said this before, but I love the infographics and study tools from the folks at The Overview Bible Project. Here is a sample of their overview of Deuteronomy.
Another great Bible study resource is the work of former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace. Here is a cool article and infographic on the authorship of the Gospel of Mark.
Jim Cymbala says, “The Scriptures are not so much the goal as they are an arrow that points us to the life-changing Christ.” Read more in his post The Limits Of Teaching.
Rosaria Butterfield wrote, “Unbelievers don’t ‘struggle’ with same-sex attraction. I didn’t….” Read more in her post The Dead End Of Sexual Sin.
GREAT NEWS: Kansas passes the nation’s first ban on abortion by dismemberment.
Zig Ziglar was a highly successful salesman, which opened the door for him to have a successful second career as a motivational speaker. His insight into money and success is well worth paying attention to—
“I define success as having acquired some of the things that money will buy and all of the things that money won’t buy—while maintaining balance in your life.”
“Money bought me the house, but it won’t buy me a home. It’ll buy me a companion, but it won’t buy me a friend. It’ll buy me a good time, but it won’t buy me peace of mind. It’ll buy me a bed, but it won’t buy me a good night’s sleep.”
“Don’t count the things you do. Do the things which count.”
“In America, we have become greedy. We are bombarded with so many ads that say, ‘You gotta have this car! You gotta wear these clothes! You gotta take this vacation trip! You gotta have that second home at the beach,’ and all of these absurd things. Over the years, I have noticed this—that if standard of living is your number-one objective, your quality of life almost never improves. But if quality of life is your number-one objective, standard of living invariably goes up. That kinda contradicts what a lot of people believe.”
“Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.”
These quotes are from the book Inspire To Be Great. You can read my review of that book by clicking here. I shared some of my other favorite quotes from this book earlier, and you can read them by clicking here.
Some good reading from today…
“I have learned…that the Lord can fill the soul with Himself, when He takes away what seemed indispensable to our happiness on earth.” —Andrew Bonar
“In a day of endless distraction and diversion, there is no greater remedy for our clouded heads and hectic lives than the sober mind of Christ.” Read more in this post: Finding A Level Head In A Hectic World.
“Prayer really is simple. Resist the urge to complicate it. Don’t take pride in well-crafted prayers. Don’t apologize for incoherent prayers. No games. No cover-ups. Just be honest—honest to God. Climb into His lap. Tell Him everything that’s on your heart. Or tell Him nothing at all. Just lift your heart to heaven and declare, ‘Father … Daddy.’ Stress. Fear. Guilt. Grief. Demands on all sides. And all we can summon is a plaintive, ‘Oh, Father.’ If so, that’s enough. Your heavenly Father will wrap you in His arms!” —Max Lucado
Some super-cool pictures of the work that won the 2014 Nobel Prize for chemistry.
[INFOGRAPHIC] The size, spread and cost of Ebola.
I have been saying this was coming: Pastors in Houston have their sermons subpoenaed to make sure they are “correct.”
“The time for speaking seldom arrives, the time for being never departs.” —George MacDonald
“The Word of God ignores size and quantity and lays all its stress upon quality. Christ, more than any other man, was followed by the crowds, yet after giving them such help as they were able to receive, He quietly turned from them and deposited His enduring truths in the breasts of His chosen 12.” —A.W. Tozer