Instead of allowing yourself to be unhappy, just let your love grow as God wants it to grow. Seek goodness in others. Love more persons more... love them more impersonally, more unselfishly, without thought of return. The return, never fear, will take care of itself.
Henry Drummond
Website
Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
Barbara Johnson
Interview
More Barbara Johnson Materials
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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. |
To a true child of God, the invisible bond that unites all believers to Christ is far more tender, and lasting, and precious; and, as we come to recognize and realize that we are all dwelling in one sphere of life in Him, we learn to look on every believer as our brother, in a sense that is infinitely higher than all human relationships. This is the one and only way to bring disciples permanently together. All other plans for promoting the unity of the Church have failed.
Arthur Tappan (A. T.) Pierson
Online Library
The Christian ought not to grudge another's reputation, nor rejoice over any man's faults; he ought in Christ's love to grieve and be afflicted at his brother's faults, and rejoice over his brother's good deeds. He ought not to be indifferent or silent before sinners. He who shows another to be wrong ought to do so with all tenderness, in the fear of God, and with the object of converting the sinner. He who is proved wrong or rebuked ought to take it willingly, recognizing his own gain in being set right.
Basil
Short Biography
With the help of grace, the habit of saying kind words is very quickly formed, and when once formed, it is not speedily lost. Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm, acute observation, divination of motives, - all these things disappear when a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of Christ Jesus. The very attempt to be like our dearest Lord is already a well-spring of sweetness within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within our reach.
Frederick W. Faber
Biography
Instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
George Macdonald
The Golden Key Website
We all know that a sympathetic and intelligent listener not only flatters our vanity, but also frequently enables us to crystallize our own ideas to the best advantage. Why, then, do we so often refuse to perform this service?
B Wilson
Short Biography
One who at times says to some of the brethren, "Yesterday I heard such and such," and again, "Do you know what happened to poor so-and-so?" and, "Did you hear of such a one's misfortune?" Will such a person ever bemindful of his own vices and be so distressed that he will shed a tear from his eyes?
Symeon
Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
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
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"
If you really want to know God, go to his people. Go to your barber and talk about God. Tell the carpenter about what you're experiencing. Take time to read the lives of the saints . They always knock you off your feet because they tell you the preoccupations you have aren't the ones you should have. Get in touch with those women and men who did crazy things like falling in love with God.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
If you are a Christian, you can expect folks to criticize, but you ought to live so nobody will believe them.
Anonymous
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
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