These large birds, [cranes] who fly great distances across continents, have three remarkable qualities. First, they rotate leadership. No one bird stays out in front all the time. Second, they choose leaders who can handle turbulence. And then, all during the time one bird is leading, the rest are honking their affirmation . That's not a bad model for the church. Certainly we need leaders who can handle turbulence and who are aware that leadership ought to be shared. But most of all, we need a church where we are all honking encouragement.
Bruce Larson
There is a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking. Some men listen with an abstracted air, which shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. Or they seem to listen, but by wide answers and irrelevant questions show that they have been occupied with their own thoughts, as being more interesting, at least in their own estimation, than what you have been saying. Some interrupt, and will not hear you to the end. Some hear you to the end, and then forthwith begin to talk to you about a similar experience which has befallen themselves, making your case only an illustration of their own. Some, meaning to be kind, listen with such a determined, lively, violent attention, that you are at once made uncomfortable, and the charm of conversation is at an end. Many persons, whose manners will stand the test of speaking, break down under the trial of listening. But all these things should be brought under the sweet influences of religion.
Frederick W. Faber
Biography
Going out to another in love means risk - the risks of self-disclosure, rejection, misunderstanding. It means grief, too, from the temporary separations, psychological or physical, to the final separation of death. Whoever insists on personal security and safety as the nonnegotiable conditions of life will not be willing to pay love's price or find love's enrichments. Whoever shuts himself or herself up in the cocoon of self-protective defenses, keeping others always at a safe distance and holding on tightly to personal possessions and privacy, will find the price of love far too high and will remain forever a prisoner of fear.
John Powell
Profile
Communication is not monologue. It is dialogue....The finest art of communication is not learning how to express your thoughts. It is learning how to draw out the thoughts of another.
Ted Tripp
When our load is light, it's time to carry someone else's.
Janette Oke
Website
It is no great matter to associate with the good and gentle; for this is a naturally pleasing to all, and everyone willingly enjoyeth peace, and loveth those best that agree with him. But to be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace, and a most commendable thing.
Thomas a Kempis
Thomas a Kempis Biography And Works
The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, they say, the name of God may be on it. Though there was a little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to men. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on; it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of, as to give His precious blood for it; therefore despise it not.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Archives
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Mean Girls All Grown Up: Surviving Catty and Conniving Women By Hayley DiMarco Gossip, insults, and cutthroat competition don't automatically stop after high school. You'll find the same sour notes at college, work, and even church! DiMarco shows you how to deal with an "ugly" past, understand meanness, realize the beauty of positive friendships---and see yourself in a whole new light! Includes quizzes, Scriptures, and inspirational quotes. 224 pages, softcover from Revell. |
There is little good in filling churches with people who go out exactly the same as they came in; the call of the Church is not to fill churches but to fill heaven.
Anonymous
A church that has passion is a church where discouraged folks cheer up, dishonest folks 'fess up, sour folks sweeten up, closed folk, open up, gossipers shut up, conflicted folks make up, sleeping folks wake up, lukewarm folk, fire up, dry bones shake up, and pew potatoes stand up! But most of all, Christ the Saviour of the entire world is lifted up.
Davon Huss
So many times Christians are divided by forms of worship. We are divided by cultural, racial, generational, national, and denominational methods of worship. However, our unity as Christians will never be found in the exterior form of worship, but in the essence of our worship. Worship is rooted in who Jesus is. I am convinced that if we focus on Him, we will better love and appreciate on another ... It is the love that flows from the Lamb of God that brings us together and makes us one.
Sammy Tippit
Ministry Website
I called to mind something I read recently in a book likening the art of pottery to God (the Potter) and us (the clay). It said when the Potter puts the vessels in the furnace for firing, he frequently puts a vessel that has already been fired between the source of heat and the vessel so that the vessel is not hurt by the intensity of the heat. Being in the furnace right now, myself, I have seen that God has placed several dear friends by my side who have already been "fired" and who are deflecting the intensity of the situation – the dearest of those friends, of course, being Jesus!
Maureen Durner
Christ prays for unity, not uniformity. Where there are great pressures for uniformity, we should be suspicious. Christians do not have to look, dress, think, and act alike. The church is not an assembly line producing only Fords.
Joe Aldrich
Samson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. I have destroyed as many relationships with the same weapon.
Anonymous
Encouragement is awesome. It (can) actually change the course of another person's day, week, or life.
Charles (Chuck) Swindoll
"Insight for Living"
We need at times, some of us at most times, that Charity from others which, being Love Himself in them, loves the unlovable. But this, though a sort of love we need, is not the sort we want. We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock. This is so well recognized that spiteful people will pretend to be loving us with Charity precisely because they know that it will wound us. To say to one who expects a renewal of Affection, Friendship, or Eros, "I forgive you as a Christian" is merely a way of continuing the quarrel. Those who say it are of course lying. But the thing would not be falsely said in order to wound unless, if it were true, it would be wounding.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
The church is never a place, but always a people; never a fold but always a flock; never a building but always a believing assembly. The church is you who pray, not where you pray.
Anonymous
It is impossible for two people to live together without being a source of mutual suffering, and as we cause others to suffer, it is but just that we should bear with their failings also and such a burden is light since Jesus Christ helps us to carry it. Do not therefore be so lacking in sense, so unreasonable and so unchristian as to pretend that you should not have to suffer anything from your Brothers and Sisters. This would be truly asking a most unheard of and extraordinary miracle. Do not expect to see such a thing during the whole of your life.
John Baptist de La Salle
Biography
Christians are like the several flowers in a garden that have each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.
John Bunyan
Online Library
The Christian who is not committed to a group of other believers for praying, sharing, and serving, so that he is known, as he knows others, is not an obedient Christian. He is not in the will of God. However vocal he may be in his theology, he is not obeying the Lord.
Ray Ortland
Communion is strength; solitude is weakness. Alone, the fine old beech yields to the blast and lies prone on the meadow. In the forest, supporting each other, the trees laugh at the hurricane. The sheep of Jesus flock together. The social element is the genius of Christianity.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
IT would seem as if very few of us give this power of kind words the consideration which is due to it. So great a power, such a facility in the exercise of it, such a frequency of opportunities for the application of it, and yet the world still what it is, and we still what we are! It seems incredible. Take life all through, its adversity as well as its prosperity, its sickness as well as its health, its loss of its rights as well as its enjoyment of them, and we shall find that no natural sweetness of temper, much less any acquired philosophical equanimity, is equal to the support of a uniform habit of kindness.
Frederick W. Faber
Biography
The fact that disabled people hang in there does something for Christians. It's not about being an inspiration for others, it more than that.... it's a mystery. God somehow strengthens others by their faithfulness. They may feel like a burden to others, but God thinks the opposite. He thinks its necessary for others to take care of the disabled... they do more for one's spiritual well being than can be imagined. What's more is that it's all being credited to the disabled person's account, per Phillipians 1:25-26. If the disabled person is alone and does not meet others, they must endure for the purpose of teaching the unseen powers, the rulers, and authorities in the heavenly realms about the powerful and all sustaining Lord (Eph 3:10).
Joni Eareckson Tada
Joni and Friends
...being a disciple means living a disciplined life, and it is not very likely that you will get other disciples unless you are one first.
Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill Association
Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord.
John Baillie
Biography
I love that word "encourage" – when you do it, you literally put "courage in" to that person. Someone who may be more battered than you know, closer to going down or giving up than you could imagine. You never know when your encouragement might literally be the difference in that person's life. When you're bruised and hurting, it's that person in your corner who can get you back in the ring for another round.
Ron Hutchcraft
Ron Hutchcraft Ministries Website
God wisely designed the human body so that we neither pat our own backs nor kick ourselves to easily.
Anonymous
Human fellowship can go to great lengths, but not all the way. Fellowship with God can go to all lengths.
Oswald Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest
Be warm and merciful and let no one go from you empty-handed. The least you can offer is your time and patience, your affection and your prayer.
Anonymous
For a man to argue, "I do not go to church; I pray alone," is no wiser than if he should say, "I have no use for symphonies; I believe only in solo music."
George A. Buttrick
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Walking the Small Group Tightrope: Managing the Tensions Every Small Group Faces
by Bill Donahue, Russ Robinson Leading a successful small group is like walking a tightrope. You traverse a taut, exciting line, balancing the dynamic tensions characteristic of every group. Drawing from the concept of "polarity management," Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson help you understand and deal with six dynamic areas every group leader must manage in order to created genuine, transforming small group community. Your group is in for unprecedented connection and growth when you harness the interplay between Truth and Life/ Care and Discipleship/ Friendship and Accountability/ Kindness and Confrontation/ Task and People/ Openness and Intimacy. Effective, life-giving small groups learn how to embrace both ends of each continuum. Walking the Small Group Tightrope will strengthen your sense of balance, help you gain confidence as a leader, and show you how to release the untapped creative and relational energy in your group. |
Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne well those laid on you; it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.
Francis de Sales
Biography And Works
Relieve and comfort all the persecuted and afflicted; speak peace to troubled consciences; strengthen the weak; confirm the strong; instruct the ignorant; deliver the oppressed from him that spoileth him; and relieve the needy that hath no helper; and bring us all, by the waters of comfort, and in the ways of righteousness, to the kingdom of rest and glory, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Jeremy Taylor
Biography
Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one.".... It is when two such person discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
The Four Loves
Into The Wardrobe
Be wide awake to the dangers of unlimited hospitality. You might reach saturation point and end by becoming superficial, distracted, or monopolized. Do not be nowhere in your effort to be everywhere, or attentive to no one simply because you are running after everyone.
Anonymous
I have learned from Jesus Christ himself what charity is, and how we ought to practise it; for He says, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." Never can I, therefore, please myself in the hope that I may obtain the name of a servant of Christ, if I possess not a true and unfeigned charity within me.
Basil
Short Biography
It is not a sign of weakness to look for confirmation. It is often a good idea to get a prayer partner who can validate your sense of God's will.
Jim Cymbala
The Brooklyn tabernacle
The supreme test of goodness is not in the greater but in the smaller incidents of our character and practice; not what we are when standing in the searchlight of public scrutiny, but when we reach the firelight flicker of our homes; not what we are when some clarion-call rings through the air, summoning us to fight for life and liberty, but our attitude when we are called to sentry-duty in the grey morning, when the watch-fire is burning low. It is impossible to be our best at the supreme moment if character is corroded and eaten into by daily inconsistency, unfaithfulness, and besetting sin.
Frederick Brotherton ( F. B. ) Meyer
Online Works
Patience is like good motor oil. It doesn't remove all the contaminants. It just puts them into suspension so they don't get into your works and seize them up. Patient people have, so too speak, a large crankcase. They can put a lot of irritants into suspension.
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
Calvin Seminary
It makes a great difference in our feeling towards others if their needs and their joys are on our lips in prayer; as also it makes a vast difference in their feelings towards us if they know that we are in the habit of praying for them. There is no chasm in society that cannot be firmly and permanently bridged by intercession; there is no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the same exercise of love.
Charles H. Brent
Brief Biography
O how near are we to each other when we are all united in God! How well do we converse when we have but a single will and a single thought in Him who is all things in us! Would you find your true friends, then? Seek them only in Him who is the single source of true and eternal friendship. Would you speak with or hear from them? Sink in silence into the bosom of Him who is the word, the life, and the soul of all those who speak and live the truth. You will find in Him not only every want supplied, but everything perfect, which you find so imperfect in the creatures in whom you confide.
Francois Fenelon
Francis Fenelon Biography
In this age of the pursuit of self gratification and self-indulgence, genuine, warm hospitality stands out as a practical example of unselfish giving. The attitude and act of welcoming a stranger into our lives as well as our homes may bear eternal fruit as well as be a practical form of ministry.
John Wimber
Doing The Stuff Website
The true Christian is like sandalwood, which imparts its fragrance to the axe which cuts it, without doing any harm in return.
Sadhu Sundar Singh
A Short Biography
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