Links & Quotes

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“Christ did not risk death. He embraced it. That is precisely why He came: not to be served but to serve and give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). … Christmas is for freedom. Freedom from the fear of death. Jesus took our nature in Bethlehem, to die our death in Jerusalem, that we might be fearless in our city. Yes, fearless. Because if the biggest threat to my joy is gone, then why should I fret over the little ones?” —John Piper

“The danger of all dangers would be to lose trust and confidence in the mercy of God. … To distrust Him would be a far more terrible thing than any physical evil which all the enemies of God put together could inflict on us, for without God’s permission neither the devils nor their human ministers could hinder us in the slightest degree.” —Francis Xavier

“Each instant of present labor is to be graciously repaid with a million ages of glory.” —J.W. Alexander

“If God did so much for us when enemies, what will He do, or rather, what will He not do, for us now that we are friends? … If Christ’s death did so much for us, what will not His life do?” —Horatius Bonar

“Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.” —Goethe

[VIDEO] Tim Dilena shares some practical keys for a consistent prayer life.

“I would exhort those who have entertained an hope of their being true converts, and yet since their supposed conversion have left off the duty of secret prayer, and do ordinarily allow themselves in the omission of it, to throw away their hope. If you have left off calling upon God, it is time for you to leave off hoping and flattering yourselves with an imagination that you are the children of God.” —Jonathan Edwards

“For too many of us, Christian experience is episodic rather than continuous, with a few religious experiences interspersed throughout our lives, which are otherwise lived on our own terms. Such people can see little need or use for prayer.” —Ralph Lehman

Eric Metaxas helps us get ready for Religious Freedom Day on January 16.

[VIDEO] Not just at Christmas when you are receiving gifts, but all year long we should be people of appreciation. Check out John Maxwell’s short video—

4 Quotes From John Maxwell On The Wise Men

On This Holy NightOn This Holy Night is a great book to read during the countdown to Christmas. Check out my review by clicking here.

John Maxwell wrote a chapter in this book entitled “When you follow a star and find a stable.” Here’s a couple of thoughts he shared from that chapter.

“Strong Christians see God in both the good and the bad. The mature believer sees God not only in pleasures and palaces, but also in the barnyards and stables of life. … Weak Christians see God in only the good.”

“I believe that all wise men throughout the ages have done these three things when they come upon a stable—to a place or situation that isn’t exactly what they were expecting. (1) Wise men of every age, when handed a difficult situation, don’t panic about the problem, but hold steady and say, ‘God is somewhere in this stable of life. There’s something I can learn. I’ll hold steady because God is somewhere in this.’ (2) Wise men also give their best when they come to a stable. (3) Wise men allow God to change their direction.”

“The difference between the average and above average person lies in just three words: And Then Some. Great men of God, and great men of society, give their very best, and then some. They forgive people, and then some. They’re always walking the extra mile. They’re always taking the extra step. … Whether it’s in preaching, or working in a factory, or at your own business, or with in your own family, the mark of a Christian is that he will walk the second mile and turn the other cheek. A wise man or woman gives the extra effort, all for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“We fancy that God can only manage His world through the big battalions of life, when all the while He is doing it through the beautiful babies that are being born into the world.” — Anonymous

On This Holy Night (book review)

On This Holy NightHere’s a great book to get you ready to celebrate Christmas: On This Holy Night. Just when you thought you had heard the Christmas story from every angle, six brilliantly insightful authors open our eyes to a fresh look at the First Advent.

John Maxwell, Bill Hybels, Max Lucado, David Jeremiah, Rick Warren and Jack Hayford are no strangers to millions of book readers around the globe. Their books have been so well received because of the unique insights they bring to everything they write.

In On This Holy Night, we are given a fresh look at the stable, the wise men, Joseph, Mary, and, of course the Messiah Jesus. I would encourage you to read a chapter each day during the countdown to your Christmas celebration, to help you really see the true meaning of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem.

I am a Thomas Nelson reviewer.

Over the next five days, I will be sharing some quotes from this book from Maxwell, Hybels, Lucado, Jeremiah, Warren and Hayford, so be sure to check back each afternoon this week.

Links & Quotes

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“Build God-centered anticipation and expectancy and excitement into your home—especially for the children. If you are excited about Christ, they will be too. If you can only make Christmas exciting with material things, how will the children get a thirst for God? Bend the efforts of your imagination to make the wonder of the King’s arrival visible for the children.” —John Piper

“The only people whose soul can truly magnify the Lord are people like Elizabeth and Mary—people who acknowledge their lowly estate [Luke 1:43, 48] and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God.” —John Piper

“I try to read every book—Christian and secular—touted as ground-breaking. None of them are. We are driven by a reality placed in us by the Creator God with legitimate ways, context, and relationship to express our sexuality. If we don’t find those legitimate outlets, we will spend our lives searching for fulfillment in self-destructive ways to fill that God-given need for community, intimacy, relationship, and meaning. We cannot live without intimacy, and here I don’t mean sex. Sex is simply one of the most powerful forms of intimacy. We are not asexual beings. Being Christ-followers, striving for integrity in all things, doesn’t neuter us.” —Becky McDonald, founder and president of Women At Risk (WAR) International

“We must discipline our minds in all things to submit to the Word of God. We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), and we are commanded to let His mind hold sway in all our thinking (Philippians 2:5). What the Scripture teaches concerning the disciplined life may not always seem the reasonable thing to do—because we cannot square its teaching with our experience or logic—but it is always the Word of God. Our duty is to get behind it and order all our steps accordingly.” —T.M. Moore

“Life is better when we act like we might see someone again soon, isn’t it?” —Seth Godin

This is scary (but typical of how abortion providers operate): a 911 call reveals that a teenager is held against her will and is being forced to have an abortion!

BREAKING NEWS: The US Senate has voted to repeal Obamacare, and defund Planned Parenthood!

Guillaume Bignon, a former atheist, has become a Christian. Here is Sean McDowell’s interview with him.

Archeologists in Israel have found a seal purported to belong to King Hezekiah. You can read about other verified archeological finds every day in the Archeological Study Bible.

[VIDEO] John Maxwell on the value of imagination—

John Maxwell On Abundance

Intentional LivingJohn Maxwell’s most recent book Intentional Living is chockfull of thought-provoking, life-changing lessons. Here’s what he wrote about changing our outlook from scarcity to abundance.

“Scarcity thinking has nothing to give. It is preoccupied with receiving. Scarcity thinking is all about me. It says, ‘There’s not enough to go around. I had better get something for myself and hold onto it with all I have.’ … People who live in the world of abundance think differently. They know there’s always more. … Abundance thinking is the mindset of people of significance, and it has nothing to do with how much they have. … Anticipation is a key that unlocks the doors to abundance thinking. ‘Doors?’ you maybe asking. ‘Don’t you mean door?’ No. Expecting there to be only one door is scarcity thinking. … Finding and going through one door is an event. Going through many doors is a lifestyle. That requires an abundance mindset. … Sadly, too many people have a scarcity mindset and lack of positive anticipation. As a result, they never open the first door. Unopened doors reinforce scarcity thinking and scarcity living. … Keep searching for doors and opening them. And remember that with each open door, your anticipation will increase and so will abundance. … No one experiences abundance while anticipating scarcity. So why not try of abundance?”

I have posted other quotes from Dr. Maxwell in Intentional Living here and here.

John Maxwell also shares a lot of quotes from other wise people, and I posted a few of my favorite here.

You can also check out my review of Intentional Living by clicking here.

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“The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as He really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God.” —John Piper

It’s pretty sad—and quite telling—when Planned Parenthood’s arguments for abortion sound eerily similar to pro-slavery and pro-Nazi arguments of the past.

Seth Godin reminds us that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Check it out! I also really liked Seth Godin’s warning about getting caught up in the Black Friday hype.

“Things will all work out” and “You can do anything you set your mind to” are just two of the seven sentimental lies you might believe.

Eric Metaxas shares about a “crisis of despair” where the church is desperately needed.

What a comfort we can have in this—“This very day I am being saved by the eternal intercession of Jesus in heaven. Jesus is praying for us and that is our salvation [Hebrews 7:25]. We are saved eternally by the eternal prayers (Romans 8:34) and advocacy (1 John 2:1) of Jesus in heaven as our High Priest. He prays for us and His prayers are answered because He prays perfectly on the basis of His perfect sacrifice.” —John Piper

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones asks a vitally important question: How’s your prayer life?

[VIDEO] A great look at competitiveness from John Maxwell—

12 More Quotes From “Intentional Living”

Intentional LivingThere’s always tons of great content in a John Maxwell book, and Intentional Living was no exception. Here’s the second set of quotes from Dr. Maxwell from this book.

“Self-centeredness and fulfillment cannot peacefully coexist. They’re incompatible.”

“As you start your day, are you wondering what you will reap, or are you wondering what you will sow? Are you waiting for others to do something for you, or are you busy looking for something to do for others?”

“If you only place a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the rest of the world will not raise the price. And as a result of your own low self-esteem and poor sense of self-worth, you will fail to make a positive difference in the lives of others because you’ll think you have little to offer.”

“History tells us that in every age there comes a time when leaders must come forth to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have an opportunity to better mankind.”

“Once you taste significance, success will never again satisfy you.”

“I know without a doubt that every day since I started asking God to bring me people who desired significance, He has been sending them into my life so that we could make a difference together. And God continues to send them.”

“Almost everything you and I want is on the other side of fear. How do you handle that? … I don’t believe God gives me a dream to frustrate me. He gives me a dream to be fulfilled. … Fear is the most prevalent reason why people stop. Faith is what makes people start. Fear is the key that locks the door to the resources. Faith is the key that opens that door. When your dream of significance is right, it should increase your faith. … Faith should help you see the invisible and do the impossible.”

“There are no great men or women. There are just great challenges that ordinary people like you and me are willing to tackle. … Nothing separates passionate people from passive people like a call to step up.”

“Dreams often come one size too big so that we can grow into them.”

“Most people miss opportunities in life, not because the opportunity wasn’t there, but because they didn’t have a clue what it looked like when it arrived. They never took the time to figure out what they were looking for. It’s all about intentionality. You have to know what you’re looking for if you want to find it.”

“When partnering with people, don’t choose based on what they say they can do, or based on what they did once. Choose based on their regular behaviors. That’s what tells you what their values are. Too often our choices are made by what we could or think we should do rather than what we usually do. We are all human, so we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But we also need to be realistic.”

“Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Vision is only refined by failure. It’s important to remain stubborn about your vision, but flexible with your plan.”

To read the first set of Maxwell quotes from Intentional Living, please click here.

To read some of the quotes that John Maxwell used in his book, please click here.

To read my review of Intentional Living, please click here.

Links & Quotes

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“Scripture is about God, God is love, therefore, if you want to learn the Scriptures, look to learn love.” —T.M. Moore

“It is remarkable that the persons in positions of power who wrote most of Israel’s Wisdom Literature did not present the poor as immoral or second-class, but as neighbors in need of mercy. On the other hand, there is never an indication that the needy are necessarily more pious; after all, poverty was never presented as an ideal of Israelite society (Deuteronomy 15:4).” —Archeological Study Bible

“Where would you have been but for grace? To repeat the old saying of John Bradford, when he saw a cartful of men going off to Tyburn to be hanged, ‘There goes John Bradford but for the grace of God.’ When you see the swearer in the street, or the drunkard rolling home at night, there are you, there am I, but for the grace of God. Who am I? What should I have been if the Lord, in mercy, had not stopped me in my mad career?” —Charles Spurgeon

[VIDEO] I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but John Maxwell says there is a healthy and unhealthy way of being defensive—

16 Insightful Quotes From “Intentional Living”

Intentional LivingJohn Maxwell’s books always contain so many great quotes from other wise men and women. Here are a few that caught my highlighter in Intentional Living.

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” —Soren Kierkegaard

“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” —T.S. Eliot

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” —Steve Jobs

“One of the best places to start to turn your life around is by doing whatever appears on your mental ‘I should’ list.” —Jim Rohn

“You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of a referee.” —Napoleon Hill

“Most people don’t aim too high and miss. They aim too low and hit.” —Bob Moawad

“Anybody can do their best. God helps us do better than our best.” —Catherine Bramwell-Booth

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it makes some difference that you have lived and lived well.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.” —Rabbi Harold Kushner

“People who matter most are aware that everyone else does, too.” —Malcolm Forbes

“Selfishness is the greatest challenge for a coach. Most players are more concerned with making themselves better than the team.” —John Wooden

“There is a direct relationship between your own level of self-esteem and the health of your personality. The more you like and respect yourself, the more you like and respect other people. The more you consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person, the more you consider others to be valuable and worthwhile as well. The more you accept yourself just as you are, the more you accept others just as they are.” —Brian Tracy

“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” —Mother Teresa

“Choose the way of life. Choose the way of love. Choose the way of caring. Choose the way of hope. Choose the way of belief in tomorrow. Choose the way of trusting. Choose the way of goodness. It’s up to you.” —Leo Buscaglia

“We’re concerned with how things turn out; God seems more concerned with how we turn out.” —Philip Yancey

“Most hockey players follow the puck on the ice. I never skate to where the puck is. I skate to where it is going.” —Wayne Gretzky

John Maxwell has a lot of great quotes himself! Here is the first batch of quotes I shared from Intentional Living. And be sure to check out my review of this outstanding book.

Links & Quotes

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“satan is real and may have a hand in our calamities, but not the final hand, and not the decisive hand. James makes clear that God had a good purpose in all Job’s afflictions: ‘You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful’ [James 5:11]. So satan may have been involved, but the ultimate purpose was God’s, and it was ‘compassionate and merciful.’” —John Piper

“God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good.” —C.S. Lewis

“Let us never suppose that there is any lack of charity in speaking of hell. Let us rather maintain that it is the highest love to warn men plainly of danger, and to beseech them to ‘flee from the wrath to come.’ It was satan, the deceiver, murderer, and liar, who said to Eve in the beginning, ‘You shall not surely die.’ (Genesis 3:4.) To shrink from telling men, that except they believe they will ‘die in their sins,’ may please the devil, but surely it cannot please God.” —J.C. Ryle

“You aren’t the only person with your skill. But you are the only person with your version of your skill.” —Max Lucado

“There is nothing natural about the Christian life. It is all supernatural. It’s a life dependent upon miracles from the very beginning (including your conversion). And it simply can’t be lived without faith in the supernatural.” —David Wilkerson

It is time for science to detach itself from an atheistic worldview. Douglas Rushkoff states, “By starting with Godlessness as a foundational principle of scientific reasoning, we make ourselves unnecessarily resistant to the novelty of human consciousness, its potential continuity over time, and the possibility that it has a purpose.”

Detroit Tigers fans (like me!) will love this: an interactive map that shows where every Tiger has been born.

John Stonestreet asks, “Why is pop music so angry?” Check out his answer in Bad Blood.

[VIDEO] John Maxwell challenges us to find someone we can inspire this weekend—