Thoughts for Thursday

"It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life...The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self controlled provided, all the time, he is setting you up in the Dictatorship of Pride...For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."


~CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

Thoughts for Thursday

"The hero does not set out to be one. He is probably more surprised than others by such recognition. He was there when the crisis occurred...and he responded as he always had in any situation. He was simply doing what had to be done! Faithful where he was in his duty there...he was ready when the crisis arose. Being where he was supposed to be...doing what the was supposed to do...responding as was his custom...to circumstances as they developed...devoted to duty--he did the heroic!"

~Richard C. Halverson

Thoughts for Thursday

"Think how boring life would be if everything always went the way we planned it. Believe me, I've learned that sometimes the best answers to prayer are the ones God doesn't answer...Think about how often we change our minds. If God gave us everything we asked for, we'd be in chaos."

~Robin Jones Gunn, Surprise Endings

Thoughts for Thursday

"Ever and always the teacher, Jesus used even this struggle with the enemy in the garden the night before the cross to teach the disciples and every future believer another lesson in godliness, a lesson about facing temptation and severe trial. The Lord not only was preparing Himself for the cross but also, by His example, preparing His followers for the crosses He calls them to bear in His name."

~John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary

Thoughts for Thursday

"If I had my own way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my way, this war would have ended before this. But we find it still continues; and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of His own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it."

~Abraham Lincoln, October 1862

Thoughts for Thursday

"A plan of life?...I never heard of such a thing."
"Yet you would smile at an architect who, having a noble structure to build, should begin to work on it in a haphazard way, putting in a brick here and a stone there, weaving in straws and sticks if they come to hand, and when asked on what work he was engaged and what manner of building he intended to erect, should reply he had no plan but thought something would come of it."

~Elizabeth Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward

Thoughts for Thursday

"I hope I'll have a history," cried Emily. "I want a thrilling career."
"We all do, foolish one. Do you know what makes history? Pain--and shame--and rebellion--and bloodshed and heartache. [Emily], ask yourself how many hearts ached--and broke--to make those crimson and purple pages in history that you find so enthralling. I told you the story of Leonidas and his Spartans the other day. They had mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. If they could have fought a bloodless battle at the polls wouldn't it have been better if not so dramatic...And, like all female creatures, you form your opinions by your feelings. Well, hope for your thrilling career--but remember that if there is to be a drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you--them someone else."

~LM Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

Thoughts for Thursday

“Imagine yourself a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.”

~CS Lewis, Mere Christianity