Great Throughts Treasury

"After a hard day scrambling to find your way around in the world, it's assuring to come home to a place you know. God can be equally familiar to you. With time you can learn where to go for nourishment, where to hide for protection , where to turn for guidance. Just as your earthly house is a place of refuge, so God's house is a place of peace."

"All I know is that the stable is empty, and the horse is gone. The rest I don?t know. Whether it be a curse or a blessing, I can?t say. All we can see is a fragment. Who can say what will come next?"

"Be a child again. Flirt. Giggle. Dip your cookies in your milk. Take a nap. Say you're sorry if you hurt someone. Chase a butterfly. Be a child again."

"Baptism is the initial step of a faithful heart."

"Answer this: A thousand years from now, will it matter what title the world gave you? No, but it will make a literal hell of a difference whose child you are."

"Baptism separates the tire kickers from the car buyers."

"Baptism is bowing before the Father and letting him do his work."

"Be a doer, not a stewer."

"Become a worry-slapper. Treat frets like mosquitoes. Do you procrastinate when a bloodsucking bug lights on your skin? 'I'll take care of it in a moment.' Of course you don't! You give the critter the slap it deserves. Be equally decisive with anxiety."

"But it is in storms that God does his finest work, for it is in storms that God has our keenest attention."

"Collect your blessings. Recognize all that you have, and finding blessings to collect will become easy. The key to a joyous day? Make gratitude your default emotion. Say, "I can find things to be grateful for in this day." Let your thoughts be positive. Expect good things to happen. Seek out people who can encourage you. Over time, you'll find that God's list of blessings is longer than your list of burdens."

"Confession is a radical reliance on grace. A proclamation of our trust in God?s goodness. What I did was bad, we acknowledge, but your grace is greater than my sin, so I confess it. If our understanding of grace is small, our confession will be small: reluctant, hesitant, hedged with excuses and qualifications, full of fear of punishment. But great grace creates an honest confession."

"Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you."

"Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts. There is a rock of greed over here, Father. I can?t budge it. And that tree of guilt near the fence? Its roots are long and deep. And may I show you some dry soil, too crusty for seed? God?s seed grows better if the soil of the heart is cleared."

"Compassion in evangelical churches is out of balance. When I talk about it, I get a lot of glazed expressions."

"Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras: bold, brassy, and everywhere."

"Don't measure the size of the mountain; talk to the One who can move it."

"Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less of my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her right where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her."

"Don't worry about having the right words; worry more about having the right heart. It's not eloquence he seeks, just honesty."

"Even though you may not understand how God works, you know he does."

"Fear corrodes our confidence in God's goodness. We begin to wonder if love lives in heaven. If God can sleep in our storms, if his eyes stay shut when our eyes grow wide, if he permits storms after we got on his boat, does he care? Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts. Fear at its center, is a perceived loss of control."

"Fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. People who refused to consult or cower to their timidities did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison and slams the doors. Wouldn?t it be great to walk out?"

"Focus on giants - you stumble. Focus on God - Giants tumble."

"Forgive freely. Forgiveness is not about saying that what a person did is okay or that they're right. It's about making a decision, a choice to let the hurt and anger go. It frees you up to move on. Forgive someone and you'll discover that that person has virtually no power to hurt you anymore. Then you'll be able to focus on what you really care about: the joy of life."

"For you who wonder if you?ve played too long to change, take courage from Jacob?s legacy. No man is too bad for God. To transform a riverboat gambler into a man of faith would be no easy task. But for God, it was all in a night?s work."

"Feed your fears and your faith will starve. Feed your faith, and your fears will."

"Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia."

"Fret not. Anxiety will ruin your day. And it can be a real confidence-killer? I started by giving myself and my audience the benefit of the doubt: We're all here because we're comfortable with one another? That habit has changed how I view the world. It's not such a menacing place anymore. You can't add one more day to your life or more life to your day by fretting. Worry doesn't take away tomorrow's troubles, it only rids today of its strength"

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever stretches out in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

"Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three-piece suit."

"God cast you in His play, wrote you into His story. He has a definite direction for your life. Fulfill it and enjoy fulfillment. Play the part God prepared for you and get ready for some great days."

"God created marriage. No government subcommittee envisioned it. No social organization developed it. Marriage was conceived and born in the mind of God."

"God is able to accomplish, provide, help, save, keep, subdue... He is able to do what you can't. He already has a plan. God's not bewildered. Go to Him."

"God does not exist to make a big deal out of us. We exist to make a big deal out of him. It?s not about you. It?s not about me. It?s all about him."

"God is God. He knows what he is doing. When you can?t trace his hand, trust his heart."

"God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain. Spit out the dirt, honey, our Father urges. I?ve got something better for you. And so he cleanses us of filth; immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don?t enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for the dirt over the ice cream. I can eat dirt if I want to! we pout and proclaim. Which is true?we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer."

"God is faithful even when his children are not."

"God leads us. God will do the right thing at the right time. And what a difference that makes."

"God meets daily needs daily. Not weekly or annually. He will give you what you need when it is needed."

"God is not troubled by one who is conservative or liberal, and He certainly never inclines His ear toward a donkey or an elephant."

"God loves us too much to indulge our every whim."

"God loves you right where you are but he doesn't want to leave you there."

"God never prefabs or mass-produces people. No slapdash shaping. I make all things new, he declares He didn?t hand you your granddad?s bag or your aunt?s life; he personally and deliberately packed you."

"God never said that the journey would be easy, but He did say that the arrival would be worthwhile."

"God sees us with the eyes of a Father. He sees our defects, errors, and blemishes. But He also sees our value. What did Jesus know that enabled Him to do what He did? Here?s part of the answer: He knew the value of people. He knew that each human being is a treasure. And because He did, people were not a source of stress, but a source of joy."

"God will use whatever he wants to display his glory. Heavens and stars. History and nations. People and problems."

"God rewards those who seek Him. Not those who seek doctrine of religion or systems or creeds."

"God's glory is the big news of the Bible, and my desire is that it would be all about me, but really it's all about God's glory."

"God?s mercies are new every morning. Receive them."

"God?s solution is a prayer away!"