15 More Quotes From “Run Today’s Race”

August 19, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald Chambers’ book Run Today’s Race was originally published as a thought-a-day calendar. Here are a few more short, thought-provoking quotes.

“When we say ‘Thy will be done,’ do we say it with a sigh? If so, we have never realized that the character of God is holy love; nothing can ever happen outside His purposeful will.”

“‘Why does God bring thunderclouds and disasters when we want to green pastures and still waters?’ Bit by bit we find, behind the clouds, the Father’s feet; behind the lightning, an abiding day that has no night; behind the thunder, ‘a still small voice’ that comforts with a comfort that is unspeakable.”

“Beware of interpreting Scripture in order to make it suit a pre-arranged doctrine of your own.”

“The New Testament view of a Christian is that he is one in whom the Son of God has been revealed, and prayer deals with the nourishment of that life.”

“In order to be able to wield the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, we must obey, and it takes a courageous heart to obey.”

“The Bible talks plentifully about joy, but it nowhere talks about a ‘happy Christian.’ Happiness depends on what happens; joy does not. Remember, Jesus Christ had joy, and He prays ‘that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.’”

“If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it better, drink it in communion with Him.”

“We must distinguish between the burden-bearing that is right and the burden-bearing that is wrong. We ought never to bear the burden of sin or doubt, but there our burdens placed on us by God which He does not intend to lift off. He wants us to roll them back on Him.”

“The reason we know so little about God’s wisdom is that we will only trust Him as far as we can work things out according to our own reasonable common sense.”

“Take time, strangle some other interests and make time to realize that the center of power in your life is the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement.”

“The essence of Christianity is that we give the Son of God a chance to live and move and have His being in us.”

“God rarely rebukes us for our impulsive plans because those plans work their own distress.”

“God will never begin to teach me His will in other matters until I do what I know.”

“‘Ye are the light of the world.’ We have the idea that we are going to shine in heaven, but we are to shine down here ‘in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation’ (Philippians 2:15). We are to shine as lights in the world in the squalid places, and it cannot be done by putting on a brazen smile, the light must be there all the time.”

“Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in? The devil? No, the cares of this world. It is the little worries always. … All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.”

Please check out my full book review of Run Today’s Race by clicking here, and the first set of quotes I posted from this book is here.

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God Takes Care Of You

August 17, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

“When God pardoned you He gave you His Son. And ‘how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ (Romans 8:32). When a father gives his son the whole orchard, it is absurd for the child to ask for one apple. …

“On the other hand, a wise father may bequeath a huge estate to his child—but not let him control anymore of this inheritance than he can manage properly. In the same way, God gives believers a right to all the comforts of life, but His infinite wisdom proportions out smaller amounts for their actual use according to the needs of each soul. Thus if you should have much less than someone else, this does not mean God loves that person more, but that He cares enough to supply according to your ability to profitably use.” —William Gurnall, in The Christian In Complete Armor

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Bill Hybels’ 10 Rules Of Respect

August 16, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

My mind and heart were expanded once again at this year’s Global Leadership Summit! Bill Hybels opened the conference with a call to leaders to promote civility in our areas of influence. Here are a few notes I jotted down.

“The solution to incivility must begin with me.” —Bill Hybels

“Christians do not get to chose whom they will respect [1 Peter 2:17].” —Bill Hybels

Bill Hybels’ 10 rules of respect:

  1. Leaders must set the standard of how to disagree without demonizing the other person.
  2. Leaders must allow spirited conversations without it getting personal.
  3. Leaders must not interrupt others who are talking.
  4. Leaders must limit their volume level and eliminate belittling words.
  5. Leaders must set the example of being courteous.
  6. Leaders must never stereotype.
  7. Leaders must apologize immediately if they are wrong.
  8. Leaders must form opinions carefully.
  9. Leaders must set the example of showing up on time and doing what they say they will do.
  10. Leaders must set rules of respect for the organization and enforce them relentlessly.

Bill Hybels closed with this challenge—“When was the last time I reflected deeply on my own convictions about respecting others?”

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9 More Quotes From “Marching Off The Map”

August 12, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Tim Elmore’s insights on the youth culture are amazing. To synthesize such great insights he obviously needs to read lots and lots of research. In all of his books, Dr. Elmore freely shares the cream-of-the-crop quotes he’s uncovered in his research. Here are a few of those quotes which I appreciated.

“In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people’s lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world.” —Margaret Mead

“We are morphing so fast that our ability to invent new things outpaces the rate we can civilize them.” —Kevin Kelly

“I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” —Horace Mann

“The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” —Denis Waitley

“Strangely, the world seems to be growing both more charitable and more selfish at the same time. I have a lot of faith that our children’s generation has the potential to rise to the unimaginable challenges that lie ahead. But at this fascinating crossroads in human history there’s also a sense that a traditional worldview and ethic will come under increasing assault in the western world.” —Chris Arias 

“[Generation Z] are the most connected, educated and sophisticated generation in history. They don’t just represent the future, they are creating it.” —Mark McCrindle

“In every society since the start of history, whenever you broke down any population this way, you’d always get a pyramid. But from 1960-2060, our pyramid will turn into a rectangle. We’ll have almost as many Americans over age 85 as under age 5. This is the result of longer lifespans and lower birthrates. It’s uncharted territory, not just for us, but for all of humanity. And while it’s certainly good news over the long haul for the sustainability of the earth resources, it will create political and economic stress in the short-term, as smaller cohorts of working age adults will be hard-pressed to finance the retirements of larger cohorts of older ones.” —Paul Taylor, Pew Research Center

“We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.” —Margaret Mead

“The military tells us we must offer diversity training, but it seems to me what our sailors most need is unity training. How can we mesh our differences into a single unit and get results?” —Navy Captain Michael Abrashoff

Check out my review of Marching Off The Map by clicking here. And read some of Tim Elmore’s quotes which I shared here. I will be sharing more quotes from this book soon, so stay tuned!

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A.W. Tozer On Reading Well

August 10, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

“To confine our reading to the works of a few favorite authors of today or last week is to restrict our horizons and to pinch our souls dangerously.” …

“To think without a proper amount of good reading is to limit our thinking to our own tiny plot of ground. The crop cannot be large. …

“Extensive reading without the discipline of practical observation will lead to bookishness and artificiality. Reading and observing without a great deal of meditating will fill the mind with learned lumber that will always remain alien to us. Knowledge to be our own must be digested by thinking.” …

“The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself. The best writer is not one that goes with us through the world of ideas like a friendly guide who walks beside us through the forest pointing out to us a hundred natural wonders we had not noticed before.” —A.W. Tozer, in Man—The Dwelling Place Of God

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15 Quotes From “Run Today’s Race”

August 9, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald Chambers mastered the art of stimulating deep thinking and introspection with just a few short statements. Run Today’s Race is designed to be read each day for a full year. Trust me, the short seed thoughts you read each morning will keep you thinking all day long. Check out my full book review by clicking here.

“It is a great moment when we realize we have the power to trample on certain moods, a tremendous emancipation to get rid of every kind of self-consciousness and heed only one thing: the relationship between God and myself.”

“It is easy to turn our religious life into a cathedral for beautiful memories, but there are feet to be washed, hard flints to be walked over, people to be fed. Very few of us go there, but that is the way the Son of God went.”

“Prayer with most of us is turned into pious platitude, it is a matter of emotion, mystical communion with God. It is no use praying unless we are living as children of God. Then Jesus says—‘Every one that asketh receiveth.’”

“There is only one purpose for your life, and that is the satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“If there is the tiniest grudge in your mind against any one, from that second, your spiritual penetration into the knowledge of God stops.”

“We have judged our fellow men as sinners. If God should judge us like that we would be in hell. God judges us through the marvelous Atonement of Jesus Christ.”

“God delights to put me in a place where He can make me wealthy. ‘Follow Me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.’”

“The more complicated the actual conditions are, the more delightfully joyful it is to see God open up His way through.”

“When we try to reserve our strength it works out in weariness. Spend to the hilt all we have got and God’s recreating power is greater than all the expended power.”

“My personal life may be crowded with small, petty incidents altogether unnoticeable and mean [commonplace], but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God and when I stand and face to face with God I shall discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed.”

“Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer.”

“One of the most amazing revelations of God comes when we learn that it is in the commonplace things that the Deity of Jesus Christ is realized.”

“As long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor until he does. The mainspring of [the Apostle] Paul’s service is not love for men but love for Jesus Christ.”

“As long as the devil can keep us terrified of thinking, he will always limit the work of God in our souls.”

“By prayer and Bible reading and meditation, the drab life (drab externally) has glorious holiday hours with God in which the soul is restored even in the valley of deep darkness.” 

More quotes coming soon, so stay tuned.

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7 Quotes + 1 Infographic From “Marching Off The Map”

August 4, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Once again, Tim Elmore has given us invaluable insight into the emerging youth culture. If you have kids or work with kids, you must read Marching Off The Map. You can check out my full book review by clicking here. Below is the first set of quotes I want to share with you, but there will be plenty more coming in the future, so stay tuned!

“Thanks to technology, information streams into their lives 24/7 and often has no filter on it, even for young children. When we determined not to censor content in the media, we had no idea (understandably) how it would affect our kids. We’re removing the opportunity for them to experience innocence and wonder. However, because they’re still maturing emotionally, socially, cognitively and biologically in their first 25 years, we have now begun to witness a strange paradox in our young: the extinction of childlikeness and the extension of childishness. …

“Since they are exposed to so much adult information, so early in their lives, they can prematurely lose (1) their sense of innocence, (2) their sense of wonder and (3) their sense of trust …

“Biologically, the graduate is an adult. Emotionally, the graduate may be unprepared for the adult world.” 

“If you think our kids are pitifully impulsive on social media—just look at the adult population. … If you think teens are addicted to Facebook, just study the hours their mothers spend on it. If you think young athletes on the Little League baseball field act childish, just look at their dads. The behavior of adults and children has become more and more similar. Society has baptized ‘youthfulness.’ We want to look young, feel young, dress young, talk young and act young. We argue with our children’s teachers. We push our kid’s coaches to get them special treatment. We are not good at delaying gratification, and we frequently don’t keep commitments we make … very much like children. The result? Adulthood has lost much of its aura and authority.”

“As you stand in front of your classroom or your own children—you are, in a sense, Galileo. You are Magellan. You are Christopher Columbus. You are Lewis and Clark. You are Neil Armstrong. Ready or not, they need you to play this role.

“Our world is both expanding and shrinking. Our past maps and methods are antiquated. Like it or not, we’re moving into unfamiliar territory and many think it’s too difficult to explore. We have fallen in love with our old maps. … 

“For educators, our role must change as we teach a generation of students who don’t need adults to get information.

“For parents, our role must change as we raise kids in a time of terrorism, economic recession, racial unrest, underemployment and ubiquitous technology.

“For coaches, our role must change as we train young athletes who have eight-second attention spans, and may arrive at practice with little resilience or grit.

“For youth workers, our role must change as we mentor students who have few life skills or values because adults either over-functioned or were absent.

“For employers, our role must change as we onboard young employees who may have never had a real job before, and may ask when ‘spring break’ will be.”

“Adults must enable the students to leverage what is new, yet at the same time, hold on to what is ancient, yet valuable. We must be both timeless and timely. So, our job as we serve the next generation is two-fold:

  • To adopt or adapt. We must seize what is new and help kids leverage it well.
  • To explain and equip. We must relate to them the timeless ideals every generation needs.”

“I believe we must cultivate one significant skill set in ourselves: we must be able to either adapt to the new world that’s emerging, or we must explain why a timeless virtue or value is still relevant in our 21st century world.”

“A third of young Americans say they don’t belong to any religion. I’ve found, however, they’ve traded in one God for many gods. They want to ‘feel’ spiritual, so they’ve created a buffet—seeking something to satisfy their soul. I often hear students say, ‘I don’t believe in religion, but I want to be a spiritual person.’ Today—pluralism is expanding across the landscape. It’s easier to say ‘no’ to one and enjoy a mixture of many.”

“A third of young Americans say they don’t belong to any religion. I’ve found, however, they’ve traded in one God for many gods. They want to ‘feel’ spiritual, so they’ve created a buffet—seeking something to satisfy their soul. I often hear students say, ‘I don’t believe in religion, but I want to be a spiritual person.’ Today—pluralism is expanding across the landscape. It’s easier to say ‘no’ to one and enjoy a mixture of many.”

“The Latin root word for ‘educate’ is ‘ducere’ which means to ‘push out.’ … We should not put students in a passive mode as we teach. We must be inspirers of learning. We must help pull ambition out of them, not push information into them.”

I’ll be posting some more quotes from Marching Off The Map next week.

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The Cure For Spiritual Fanaticism

July 31, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

“Some time after Pentecost a group of believers met to pray for strength and power to meet the emergency then facing them, and to enlist the help of God on their behalf. ‘And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness’ (Acts 4:31). Some of these were of the original number filled at Pentecost. It is hardly conceivable that God acted contrary to His own will in filling them again after Pentecost. Still other outpourings are recorded in Acts 8, Acts 10 and Acts 19. All these occurred some years after the original act.

“In brief, the teaching of the New Testament is that the outpouring at Pentecost was the historic beginning of an era which was to be characterized by a continuous outpouring of the Holy Spirit. …

“This anti-emotionalism, though it is sponsored by some good people and travels in pretty orthodox company, is nevertheless an unwarranted inference, not a scriptural doctrine, and is in violent opposition to psychology and common sense. Where in the Bible are feeling and faith said to be at odds? The fact is that faith engenders feeling as certainly as life engenders motion. We can have feeling without faith, it is true, we can never have faith without feeling. Faith as a cold, unemotional light is wholly unknown in the Scriptures. …

“The Holy Spirit is the cure for fanaticism. Not the cause of it.”

—A.W. Tozer, in Paths To Power

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8 Quotes From “Paths To Power” by A.W. Tozer

July 26, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

As I said in my book review, A.W. Tozer’s words frequently make me say both “Ouch!” and “Amen!” Maybe you’ll feel the same thing in these few quotes.

“Left to herself the Church must have perished as a thousand abortive sects had done before her, and have left nothing for a future generation to remember. That the Church did not so perish was due entirely to the miraculous element within her. That element was supplied by the Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost to empower her for her task. For the Church was not an organization merely, not a movement, but a walking incarnation of spiritual energy. …

“In short, the Church began in power, moved in power, and moved just as long as she had power. When she no longer had power she dug in for safety and sought to conserve her gains. But her blessings were like manna: when they tried to keep it overnight it bred worms and stank. So we have had monasticism, scholasticism, institutionalism; and they have all been indicative of the same thing: absence of spiritual power.” 

“The weakness in our message today is our overemphasis on faith with a corresponding underemphasis on obedience. This has been carried so far that ‘believe’ has been made to double for ‘obey’ in the minds of millions of religious persons.”

“In every denomination, missionary society, local church, or individual Christian this law operates. God works as long as His people live daringly; He ceases when they no longer need His aid.” 

“To any casual observer of the religious scene today, two things will at once be evident: one, that there is very little sense of sin among the unsaved, and two, that the average professed Christian lives a life so worldly and careless that it is difficult to distinguish him from the unconverted man.”

“It is always dangerous to isolate a truth and then press it to its limit without regard to other truth.”

“It may be stated as an axiom of the Christian system that whatever makes sin permissible is a foe of God and an enemy of the souls of men.”

“Some time after Pentecost a group of believers met to pray for strength and power to meet the emergency then facing them, and to enlist the help of God on their behalf. ‘And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word of God with boldness’ (Acts 4:31). Some of these were of the original number filled at Pentecost. It is hardly conceivable that God acted contrary to His own will in filling them again after Pentecost. Still other outpourings are recorded in Acts 8, 10 and 19. All these occurred some years after the original act.

“In brief, the teaching of the New Testament is that the outpouring at Pentecost was the historic beginning of an era which was to be characterized by a continuous outpouring of the Holy Spirit.”

“This anti-emotionalism, though it is sponsored by some good people and travels in pretty orthodox company, is nevertheless an unwarranted inference, not a scriptural doctrine, and is in violent opposition to psychology and common sense. Where in the Bible are feeling and faith said to be at odds? The fact is that faith engenders feeling as certainly as life engenders motion. We can have feeling without faith, it is true, we can never have faith without feeling. Faith as a cold, unemotional light is wholly unknown in the Scriptures.”

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11 Quotes From “Man—The Dwelling Place Of God” by A.W. Tozer

July 19, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

A.W. Tozer’s 50-year-old publication Man—The Dwelling Place Of God still rings with timely truth for today. You can check out my full book review by clicking here.

“I long ago decided that I would rather know the truth than be happy in ignorance. If I cannot have both truth and happiness, give me truth. We’ll have a long time to be happy in heaven.”

“Shakespeare may be enjoyed without penitence; we may understand Plato without believing a word he says; but penitence and humility along with faith and obedience are necessary to a right understanding of the Scriptures.”

“Faith and morals are two sides of the same coin. Indeed the very essence of faith is moral. Any professed faith in Christ as personal Savior that does not bring the life under plenary obedience to Christ as Lord is inadequate and must betray its victim at the last. The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is not true faith present.”

“There are two kinds of love: the love of feeling and the love of willing. The one lies in the emotions, the other in the will. Over the one we may have little control. It comes and goes, rises and falls, flares up and disappears as it chooses, and changes from hot to warm to cool and back to warm again very much as does the weather. Such love was not in the mind of Christ when He told His people to love God and each other. … The love the Bible enjoins is not the love of feeling; it is the love of willing, the willed tendency of the heart.”

“Let no one interpret the Scriptures for you in such a way as to rule out the Father’s gift of the Spirit. Every man is as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. Make your heart a vacuum and the Spirit will rush in to fill it.”

“I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.”

“The church today is suffering from the secularization of the sacred. By accepting the world’s values, thinking its thoughts and adopting its ways we have dimmed the glory that shines overhead. We have not been able to bring earth to the judgment of heaven so we have brought heaven to the judgment of the earth. Pity us, Lord, for we know not what we do!”

“David Brainerd once compared a man without the power of the Spirit trying to do spiritual work to a workman without fingers attempting to do manual labor. The figure is striking but it does not overstate the facts. The Holy Spirit is not a luxury meant to make deluxe Christians, as an illuminated frontispiece and a leather binding make a deluxe book. The Spirit is an imperative necessity.”

“I do not believe that it is the will of God that we should seek to be happy, but rather that we should seek to be holy and useful. The holy man will be the useful man and he’s likely to be a happy man too; but if he seeks happiness and forgets holiness and usefulness, he’s a carnal man.”

“That religion may be very precious to some persons is admitted, but never important enough to cause division or risk hurting anyone’s feelings. In all our discussions there must never be any trace of intolerance; but we obviously forget that the most fervent devotees of tolerance are invariably intolerant of everyone who speaks about God with certainty. And there must be no bigotry, which is the name given to spiritual assurance by those who do not enjoy it.”

“The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected.”

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