quotes | Craig T. Owens

February 2026
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28

Links & Quotes

August 17, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

It’s easy to get along with those we like. But God calls on Christians to do the hard—but rewarding—work of getting along with everyone! Check out this full sermon about the strength in Christian unity.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

“Dad always said you could fall off the same ladder you climbed up.” —Hank Aaron

Paleontologists have noted that what Creationists would call pre-Flood mammals lived longer than similar mammals today. “This research should be of interest to Bible-believing Christians because, as chronicled in Genesis 5, humans in the pre-Flood world were experiencing much greater lifespans. Moreover, the advanced ages of the Genesis 5 patriarchs at the births of their sons strongly suggest delayed sexual maturation and possible delayed skeletal maturation, too. The Bible gives no hint that this amazing longevity was in any way supernatural.”

“If we leave our failure, we don’t learn from our failure. If we learn from our failure, we seldom have to leave because of our failure.” —John Maxwell

Dr. Steve Nichols hosts a great podcast called 5 Minutes In Church History. In the episode this week, he talked about the church politics Jonathan Edwards had to confront when he first arrived in Stockbridge. It came to a head in a letter Edwards received: “All it did was go into, again, politics, accusing Edwards of mis-running the school, which wasn’t true, and deflecting the blame and the focus away from the Williams family. And now Edwards needs to vindicate himself. Well, all that to say, we think of these church history figures, and we see their portraits, we sometimes forget that they’re actually people, and they had to deal with challenges too.” These types of faultfinding accusations are what I address in my book When Sheep Bite.

If God would say this (Ezekiel 5:7-9) about His chosen people Israel, how much more so should other nations take notice, repent of their egregious sins, and plead with God for mercy!

Links & Quotes

August 10, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

No one wants what the gloomy person has. Joy is a Christian’s testimony—it’s what attracts others to Jesus! Check out this full message from my series on the Songs of Ascent.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

“At first glance, people may not see how these different forms of sexual violence connect to each other. But, in fact, experts are increasingly recognizing that they may all stem from one common source—sexual objectification. Sexual objectification occurs when people perceive others as sex objects rather than complex human beings deserving of dignity and respect.” Pornography is a major contributor to the sexual objectification which leads to sexual violence.

Dr. Brian Thomas describes why fossils are found where they are and why land animals may even be found near marine animals: “This fossil discovery [a bone from a South American megaraptor found near Cape Otway, Australia] fits well with a biblical history, which goes something like this: Around 2348 BC, a worldwide flood crushed and reshaped the earth’s surface, breaking up a single landmass (Pangaea) into continents and fossilizing countless living things. Prior to the Flood megaraptors roamed Pangaea, during the Flood they were fossilized, and in the late Flood stages the boundaries of new continents (along with their fossils) were roughly shaped. Unlike the standard story, the outlines of this history have been testified to by reliable eyewitnesses, and this testimony has been faithfully preserved in Genesis.”

“The more we let God take over us, the more truly ourselves we become—because He made us.” —C.S. Lewis

J. Warner Wallace shares two trends in American society that are contributing to the decline of religious adherence in America.

“There is no way around hard work. Embrace it.” —Roger Federer

Shame on my thoughts, how they stray from me!

During the Psalms, they wander on a path that is not right; they run, they distract…

One moment they follow the ways of loveliness, and the next the ways of riotous shame…

Swiftly they leap in one bound from earth to heaven…

O beloved Christ… may the grace of the sevenfold Spirit come to keep them in check!

Rule this heart of mine, O swift God of the elements, that You may be my love, and I may do Your will! —Anonymous, On the Flightiness of Thought, Irish, 8th-9th century

Ungodly leaders become more and more selfish, while shepherd leaders become more and more God-fearing and more and more attentive to the needs of others (Jeremiah 12:10-11). Check out my series of posts for godly leaders and my book Shepherd Leadership.

Links & Quotes

August 3, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Leaders may have to talk about people on their team, but how do we do this without crossing the line into gossip? Greg and I discussed this on a recent episode of our leadership podcast.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” —G.K. Chesterton

“Christianity does not consist in telling the truth, or walking in a conscientious way, or adhering to principles; Christianity is something other than all that, it is adhering in absolute surrender to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.” —Oswald Chambers, in Baffled To Fight Better

I really like the He Gets Us campaign! Here is a recent one.

“Critics may nitpick the Scriptures upon which we base our beliefs, but each year, the Lord will increasingly demonstrate that His Word contains no errors, exaggerations, or omissions. … We won’t feel ashamed of our hope. It will unfold just as the Lord has promised. We will be nourished, guided, blessed, and comforted. Our Lord will return, and then our days of sorrow will be over. How we will exult in the Lord, who first gave us a vibrant hope and then fulfilled that which we hoped for!” —Charles Spurgeon

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Charles Spurgeon, Christianity, Craig And Greg Show, G.K. Chesterton, God's promise, gossip, He Gets Us, inerrant, Jesus Christ, leadership, Oswald Chambers, quotes, Scripture, video. Leave a Comment »

The Benefits Of A Little Stress

July 30, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

On our most recent leadership podcast, Greg and I were talking about the idea of not trying to eliminate stress from our workplaces. I know that may initially sound counterintuitive, but it actually makes a lot of sense when you really think about it.

You can check out the full conversation we had on the Craig And Greg Show, but I’d especially like to direct your attention to this clip. The quote Greg is referencing right at the beginning of the clip is from Andrew Murray:

“A great team begins to happen when you have the right people on the bus in the right seats and the bus breaks down…. They work through the crisis, they get back on the bus, they’re sweating and tired. All of the sudden something magical happens: They begin to talk to each other. Culture happens through crisis. Unfortunately, many team environments have structured the crisis out.”

Here’s a couple of other quotes for you to ponder:

“Crisis is a powerful motivator. It enables you to do things you should have been doing all along. Whoever said that nothing focuses the mind like the sight of the gallows had it right.” —Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox

“If you really want to see innovation happen, find a crisis. It’s in the middle of a crisis when we come to the realization that either the end is near or a new future is being born. On the verge of a crisis, we are also on the verge of our greatest moment. It’s at that moment that we must decide: innovate or die.” —Dave Ferguson, in his book On The Verge

You may also want to check out my blog post Moderate stress is healthy.

►► Would you please prayerfully consider supporting this ministry? My Patreon supporters get behind-the-scenes access to exclusive materials. ◀︎◀︎

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Craig And Greg Show, crisis, growth mindset, leadership, personal growth, quotes, stress, video. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 27, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Leaders should be able to use mistakes as growth opportunities. Check out these wise words from the book Spiritual Leadership.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

T.M. Moore encourages Christian to be ready to help their neighbors answer their burning questions: “Christians, Charles Taylor insists, must not be guilty of crushing human flourishing by a too-small vision of God and an unloving or unenergetic approach to our neighbors. Instead, we must study and prepare to ‘respond most profoundly and convincingly to what are ultimately commonly felt dilemmas.’ We must be ready to guide our neighbors out of the dark woods of wrong belief into the radiant meadows of the Sun of Righteousness, risen with healing in His wings. But to do this, we must be ready guides. We must anticipate the questions our groping neighbors will ask and prepare to answer them clearly and intelligently (1 Peter 3:15).”

True strength and courage only come to the one who thinks God’s thoughts and does God’s deeds (see Joshua 1:7). The strong and courageous leader is never self-made, but unshakably God-dependent.

On the latest Craig and Greg Show podcast, this the quote from Andy Murray that I shared: “A great team begins to happen when you have the right people on the bus in the right seats and the bus breaks down…. They work through the crisis, they get back on the bus, they’re sweating and tired. All of the sudden something magical happens: They begin to talk to each other. Culture happens through crisis. Unfortunately, many team environments have structured the crisis out.”

Mabel Dean went to Egypt at 40 years old and stayed there for nearly 40 years without taking a single furlough! “All of Dean’s life, people did not expect her to amount to much. Despite what others said, Dean believed that she had a mandate from God for missions work in Africa. She later stated, ‘I was the only homely one in my family. Yet I was the one that He chose for His work.’”

One of the prayers in the Songs of Ascent calls us to mature (or ascend) in our prayers for those who have hurt us.

“There is always a better way of doing things, and either you or your competitor will find it.” —Brad Anderson

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: 1 Peter, Assembly of God, Bible study, competition, courage, Craig And Greg Show, Henry Blackaby, innovation, Joshua, leadership, maturity, missionary, mistake, prayer, quotes, stress, T.M. Moore, video. Leave a Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 20, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

You are more likely to act yourself into good feelings than you are to feel yourself into action. Leaders need to get moving and keep moving! Check out this full conversation from The Craig and Greg Show.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

In news that’s not surprising at all, many recent paleontological discoveries confirm to exactly what would be expected if we take the biblical account of Creation and a global Flood literally.

John Piper was asked to weigh-in on the value of repetitive phrases in worship songs. He said, “The issue’s not repetition per se but whether there is enough substance, enough rich content of truth about God woven into the repetitions to justify them, to warrant them. That’s the issue. There’s a difference between repetitions that are called forth by the repeated crescendo of new, glorious truth, and repetitions that serve as a kind of mantra without sufficient truth that is simply used to sustain or intensify a mood. Moods in worship should be awakened and sustained primarily by truth, assisted by music—not primarily by music with a little truth thrown in to justify the singing.”

Pastor John Piper used Psalm 136 as an example in the post above. T.M. Moore also shared this thought about Psalm 136: “The term most frequently used to describe this everywhere-present-and-always-at-work love of God is translated as ‘lovingkindness’ or, in some versions, ‘steadfast love.’ Especially Psalm 136, with its antiphonal arrangement of verses, insists that the cosmos is upheld, sustained, and pervaded by the lovingkindness of God. … It would improve our learning to pray without ceasing if we simply took some time out during the day to thank the Lord for the many ways His steadfast love surrounds, sustains, and swarms us at every moment!”

“When people refer to a man as a man of the Book, meaning the Bible, he’s generally found to be a man of multitudinous books, which simply isolates the one Book to its proper grandeur. The man who reads only the Bible does not as a rule know it or human life.” —Oswald Chambers

Men’s Health magazine shared an interview with Jeremy Renner, who was nearly killed in a tragic accident. I love his attitude about making today better than yesterday. His words remind me of a poem my grandma used to use to motivate me to keep “besting” what I had already done.

Christopher Ash writes about reading the Psalms through the lens of Jesus. He concludes this way: “I remember seeing on the wall of a church the words of Psalm 20:4: ‘May [the Lord] grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!’ How wonderful, you might think. The Bible promises me all that my heart desires. Until you read the psalm and realize that Psalm 20 is a prayer for the king in David’s line. Ultimately, it is a prayer that Jesus will have His heart’s desire granted and that His plans will be fulfilled. And they will! The Psalms are not all about me. If I think they are, I will end up disillusioned. But when I grasp that they are all about Christ, my heart lifts in joy that He is the blessed Man and I belong to Him.”

Links & Quotes

July 13, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

This is the intro to an exclusive video for my Patreon supporters. Your support would be so helpful and you will get some cool stuff too!

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

I’m proud to be a part of the Assembly of God fellowship that has its roots in missions. Alice Luce is a great example of a missions pioneer whose work in the 1920s is still bearing fruit today.

“Our nation’s founding document declared independence from Britain, but, with equal fervor, declared dependence upon God. Expressing ‘firm reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,’ the signers committed the American experiment to their Maker. The Spirit of 1776 was reverence and trust. So, as we mark this solemn occasion, let us seek a rebirth of true liberty, which is possible only when governed by divine law. For, without God, we can never have ‘liberty and justice for all.’” —Chuck Colson

“It is impossible to describe the abundance of peace and heavenly joy that often flows into my soul by means of the fresh answers which I have obtained from God, after waiting upon him for help and blessing; and the longer I have had to wait upon him, or the greater my need, the greater the enjoyment when at last the answer comes, which has often been in a very remarkable way, in order to make the hand of God the more manifest.” —George Mueller

The Institute for Creation Research reports on a study: “Physicists at Roskilde University in Denmark have shown that a single equation correctly describes the frequency of wing and fin strokes for a wide array of flying and swimming creatures, including birds, insects, bats, and whales.” Wow, it’s almost as if an all-wise Creator knew what He was doing!

T.M. Moore uses the understanding of wireless internet access to help Christians with a picture of prayer. “When we bend our increasingly Christ-filled minds, hearts, and consciences to the spiritual code-writing of prayer, we craft messages which shape the spiritual air as they course their way toward the Source of all living-water spiritual power, Who is filling all things with Himself. The more we pray with Christ-overflowing souls, the more we flood the spiritual airspace with the Lord, crowding out and sidelining those forces of wickedness which seek to jam those airwaves or fill them with spiritual disinformation. And the less spiritual ‘airspace’ the devil can command, the better for all of us.” —T.M. Moore

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: American history, Assembly of God, Chuck Colson, Creator, Declaration of Independence, George Mueller, Institute for Creation Research, joy, missionary, Patreon, peace, prayer, quotes, spiritual warfare, T.M. Moore, video. Leave a Comment »

5 Quotes From “Recruiting To Releasing”

July 9, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

I loved Jim Wiegand’s book Recruiting to Releasing! If you missed it, I had an opportunity to interview Pastor Jim, and I shared that video here.

There were so many passages that I highlighted and annotated as I read this book. My Patreon supports have access to all of the quotes, but I wanted to share a handful of them with you publicly.

Jim’s book centers on the intersection of three circles. This is the “sweet spot” where people are doing what God created them to do. In order to find your sweet spot (or help others find theirs), Jim gives us three questions. Here are those questions with a couple of supporting quotes.

Question #1—What is your passion?

“The easiest question is the first one I always ask and sounds something like this: What are you passionate about? What thrills you when you get to do it? What makes your heart come alive when you see it? What do you love to do when you’re done doing what you have to do? If all jobs paid the same and you couldn’t fail, what would you do starting tomorrow?”

“Paul said he was ‘compelled’ to preach the gospel and that it was a ‘pleasure’ to do so. His passion for the God of the lost and the lost themselves caused him to travel the world. Everywhere he went, he saw revival or a riot, or at times, both in the same day. Then he’d be mistaken for a Greek god, stoned and left for dead or at times beaten, imprisoned, and slated for execution. And then the next day, he got up and did it all over again. That’s not fear of failure! That’s a God-given passion to tell people the good news of Jesus Christ!”

Question #2—What is your pain?

“What bothers you? What is it you see in the world that you would change? What breaks your heart? What do you find yourself praying about more than any other thing? What subjects do people no longer want to talk to you about because you’re always talking about those things?”

“The way I figure it, if it was bothering me the way it was, I was probably the one God wanted to do something about it. You see, I’ve learned that if I do something about what bothers me, and you do something about what bothers you, and the folks around here all do something about what bothers them, well, eventually there may come a day when there won’t be anything left to bother anyone.”

Question #3—What is your proficiency?

“What are you good at? What comes naturally to you? What did you pick up quickly and easily compared to others around you? What do you do with little effort that takes others much effort?”

I highly recommend that all ministry leaders get a copy of Recruiting to Releasing. Be sure to check out my interview with Jim Wiegand too.

►► Would you please prayerfully consider supporting this ministry? My Patreon supporters get behind-the-scenes access to exclusive materials. ◀︎◀︎

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: book review, God's purpose, Jim Wiegand, ministry, passion, purpose, quotes. 1 Comment »

Links & Quotes

July 6, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

In what may be the best-known parable that Jesus told, what’s the difference between the hard path where the seeds failed to produce anything and the fertile soil where the seeds produced an abundant harvest? The fertile soil had a plow applied to it. In the same way, God wants to “plow” the hard places in our life so that there can be an abundant harvest! Check out this full sermon here.

I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.

“The greatest reason for a loss of reality is that while we say we believe one thing, we allow the spirit of the naturalism of the age to creep into our thinking, unrecognized.” —Francis Schaeffer, in True Spirituality

“The glory of God is a silver thread, which must run through all our actions.” —Thomas Watson

“Christianity is not the removal of weakness, nor is it merely the manifestation of divine power. Rather, it is the manifestation of divine power through human weakness.” —Dr. Donald Stamps, Life In The Spirit Study Bible, commenting on 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, 12:9-10

“In our media-rich, secular age, we must be especially vigilant against unbelief finding its way into our hearts [Hebrews 3:12]. The heavenly calling of God is really real, and we can really partake of it. But we’ll need to be continuously on guard against ideas and messages that can undermine our confidence, stifle our boasting, rob us of the reality of our experience of Christ, set us adrift from the Lord, and end up proving us to be someone other than we thought.” —T.M. Moore

“If you don’t want responsibility, don’t sit in the big chair. To be successful, you must accept full responsibility.” —Pat Summitt

From the 1440 Daily Digest: Congratulations, America—July 4, 2024, marks the 248th commemoration of the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. Through the centuries, the US has grown from 13 colonies with about 2.5 million people to 50 states and 14 territories with a population of more than 330 million. The economy has swelled to over $27T. Advances in public health have cut the child mortality rate from over 45% to under 1%, while our citizens live over 35 years longer on average. Scientific achievements in the US have delivered everything from the light bulb, modern flight, and the internet to air conditioning, movies, and the polio vaccine. More than 2.7 million miles of power lines electrify the country across over 4 million miles of paved roads, with over 90% of households accessing broadband internet. The US has also been responsible for more than 800 human visits to space—the most of any country.

Still Maturing

July 1, 2024 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.

Have you ever said to yourself…

…I should have known better?
…why I am going through this again?
…I thought I was over this hurdle?
…you would think I would have matured enough by now to not have to deal with this?

Maybe the author of Psalm 129 felt this way: “Here I am on the 10th step and I’m still having to deal with this! When will I finally arrive at the top and be done with these issues?” (compare Psalm 129:1-2 with 124:1-5).

(Check out all of the Scriptures I use in this post by clicking here.)

I think those statements—“I should have known better” or “I thought I was over this”—pre-suppose that we will reach a point in our life where we “arrive.” If nothing else, this psalm is a reminder that we are still on the journey, that we are still a work-in-progress, that the saint-ification process is still ongoing. It’s clear from Scripture that we never “arrive” until we arrive in Heaven and hear our Master say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

While we are ascending up toward our heavenly home, these great oppressions and plowings remind us that there is still work to be done in us and through us to bring glory to God (Romans 5:3-4; James 1:2-4, 12).

Of his Soviet prison, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “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.”

The reality is God is using all of those things for my good and for His glory (Romans 8:28).

What happens as I am oppressed and plowed?

(1) I am refined—Psalm 66:8-12, 16-20. God is removing the impurities from my life.

(2) My prayers are matured. Psalm 129:5-8 is an imprecatory prayer, a prayer that says, “Get ‘em, God!” These have their place, but for us they are to be our emergency release valve (which I discuss in more depth in my book When Sheep Bite). But Jesus calls for our prayers to mature from imprecatory to intercessory (Matthew 5:43-45). In my book I write, “This is the highest level of Christian maturity: To pray like Jesus did for those who insulted Him, slandered Him, and crucified Him, ‘Father, forgive them for they don’t understand what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34)”

(3) I develop more intimate God-dependence—2 Corinthians 1:8-10.

(4) I am better equipped to help others—2 Corinthians 1:3-6.

(5) Others feel more inclined to pray for me—2 Corinthians 1:7, 11.

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength.” —Vance Havner

Oppressed? Yes! Defeated? No!

Plowed? Yes! Enslaved by the plow’s cords? No!

God uses this to bring us closer and closer to Him until He can eventually say to us face-to-face, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That’s when we truly arrive! Until then, we keep on ascending.

If you’ve missed any of the other messages in our series looking at these songs of ascent, you can check them all out here.

►► Would you please prayerfully consider supporting this ministry? My Patreon supporters get behind-the-scenes access to exclusive materials. ◀︎◀︎