Goethe

Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 244

Milton V. Uecker

Sanctification is the lifelong process of bringing every thought, attitude, and action into captivity, allowing the Holy Spirit to convict and transform so that we are changed into the image of Christ, from one degree of glory to the next.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 223-224

Dr. Henry Cloud

God is free from us. When he does something for us, he does it out of choice. He is not "under compulsion" or guilt or manipulation. He does things, like dying for us, because he wants to. We can rest in his pure love; he has no hidden resentment in what he does. His freedom allows him to love.

Boundaries, 239

Ann Voskamp

But I am not a woman who ever loves the full knowing. I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from
The mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget. I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I am empty of truth and need the refilling. I need come again every day--bend, clutch, and remember--for who can gather the manna but once, hoarding, and store away sustenance in the mind for all of the living.

One Thousand Gifts, 106

Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

Every time you feel in God's creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thought to God and say: "O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!"

One Thousand Gifts, 102

Ann Voskamp

Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transforming the notes of my life into the song of His Son?

One Thousand Gifts, 100

Ellen Lowrie Black

Attitudes are contagious and are directly linked to motivation, and teachers benefit from monitoring their own attitudes carefully. A commitment to learning can be sensed when teachers exhibit wholesome positive attitudes.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 153

Galileo

Holy Scripture and Nature are both emancipations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant executrix of God's commands.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 152

Ellen Lowrie Black

Teachers have the right to expect more from students who are more mature, or who have greater gifts.... A Christian teacher who is "fair" does not treat all students in exactly the same manner. Fairness requires discernment, and discernment demands the use of varying strategies.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 150

Ellen Lowrie Black

Being a biblical role model is a calling of the Christian teacher. It is not an option or an afterthought. Fundamental to everything a teacher does is the biblical challenge to be a role model.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 149

Ellen Lowrie Black

The teacher's primary responsibility in the Christian school is twofold, to be the spiritual leader and the academic leader. Teachers who do not embrace a biblical worldview are incapable of teaching the whole child, for God created humankind with a mind, body, and soul.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 147

Ellen Lowrie Black

Teaching in a Christian school is a calling and a ministry that results from knowing God well and following His direction. Being an educator is a vocation; being a Christian educator is a spiritual ministry that has passion and purpose.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 147

Richard J. Edlin

If Christian schools are doing their job properly, their teachers and students should be salt-and-light beacons of hope in this postmodern nightmare. By representing God and His way as they have taught and learned it in school, they have the opportunity to stand tall themselves and reach out with God's shalom into all areas of this desperate and needy world.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 79

Richard J. Edlin

This confrontation will mean that Christian school programs must help students find out about the world as it really is, even to the extent of studying and genuinely comprehending false perspectives. Only then will our students be able to speak coherently with people who are wedded to those false views and lead them toward the light.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 79

Kenneth O. Gangel

Christian educators teaching from a biblical worldview desire to affect the whole student, not just the intellect. We red to see our students as more than empty minds waiting to be filled. Students are fallen but redeemable people needing to live out their redemption in relationship to one another. In short, we as educators must translate our theology and philosophy into "street sense," enabling our students to live a Christlike life in the real world. They must learn not only what the Scriptures teach but how to live daily in accordance with a biblical worldview.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 65

Kenneth O. Gangel

A biblical education includes a view of oneself as totally dependent on the work of Christ for both salvation and sanctification.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 63

Jack Layman

One who "sees" what is not clear to most others should give the issue careful thought. One should be careful about moving from the clear teaching of the Bible to logical inference. As church leaders extended the Bible's infallibility to church pronouncements, natural theology grew beyond what Scripture taught, as demonstrated by Galileo's clash with the Roman Catholic Church.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 27

Dallas Willard

Paying careful attention to how Jesus made use of logical thinking can strengthen out confidence in Jesus as master of the centers of intellect and creativity, and can encourage us to accept him as master in all of the areas of intellectual life in which we may participate.

Foundations of Christian School Education, 12

Ann Voskamp

I redeem time from neglect and apathy and inattentiveness when I swell with thanks and weigh the moment down and it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough.

One Thousand Gifts, 72

John Wamsley

An effective curriculum leader, then, is a servant leader who is committed to a high level of trust, mutual support, and accountability within the learning community, developing the best instruction possible (including selecting the essential standards, developing and implementing curriculum, creating common formative assessments, using realistic and attainable goals, teaching rigorous lessons, analyzing data, sharing best practices and finding the best interventions and enrichments to address students’ needs) to produce lifelong learners who fulfill their God-given potential.

Jim Elliot

Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.

Julian of Norwich

The highest form of prayer is to the goodness of God.... God only desires that our soul cling to him with all of its strength, in particular, that it clings to his goodness. For of all the things our minds can think about God, it is thinking upon his goodness that pleases him most and brings the most profit to our soul.

One Thousand Gifts, 61

C.S. Lewis

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad.

God in the Dock, 52

Erasmus

A nail is driven out by another nail; a habit is overcome by habit.

One Thousand Gifts, pg. 49

Tim Keller

"Finally I thank my wife, Kathy. This volume is just one more joint effort to make good on our wedding pledge, that, through our life together, 'the afflicted may hear, and be glad' (Psalm 34:2)."

Generous Justice

Steve Jobs

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me."

Harry Cleaver

"Money is power and that's the reason why people worry about it."

-UT Economics Professor

Leslie Weatherhead

"The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is disbelief."

O Donald Olson

"The average American is busy buying things he doesn't want with money he doesn't have to impress people doesn't like."

John Maxwell

"A marriage can't survive on leftovers."

Mark Twain

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."

Michael LeBoef

"Devoting a little of yourself to everything mens committing a great deal of yourself to nothing."

Oswald Chambers

"When you fear God, you fear nothing else. If you do not fear God, you fear everything else."

John Piper

"Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God."

A.W. Tozer

"Humble yourself and cease to care what men think."

C.S. Lewis

"Can you not see death as a friend and deliverer?"

Jim Elliot

"Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me."

C.S. Lewis

"In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not."

Randy Alcorn

"When we realize the pleasures that await us in God's presence, we can forgo lesser pleasures now."

Poppa Ed

"We are trying to enter the 21st century. Did you realize that there now is a newfangled thing called a typewriter? Then there is also something that when you push a button, it lights up a room. I think it is called a light bulb. It was invented by a fellow named Thomas Edison. These are exciting times."

Unknown

"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."

Ann Voskamp

There are still resurrections and we are witnesses.

My sister and brother-in-law, they carry Baby Ema to the front of the chapel and they tell the story of the last year, of Ema not breathing and her heart stopping and, facing losing this little girl, how they came to taste it, like the mystery of manna, that when nothing makes sense, God is enough, and they know it, because they’ve experienced it, that the tomb is empty and He rises in us, and I can’t look up now at all.

Daily Email, 4/9/12

The Joker

"If you're good at something, never do it for free."

The Dark Knight

Puritan Prayers

"I retire this night in full assurance of one day awakening with Thee."

Puritan Prayers

Here is love:

When I cannot rise to HIm

He draws me near,

On wings of grace

To raise me to Himself

John Piper

"Authentic worship is when affections for God arise in the heart as an end in themselves."

Desiring God

J.I. Packer

"Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most life's problems fall into place of their own accord."

Knowing God

Victor Frankl

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

John Piper

"How shall we honor God in worship? By saying, 'It is my duty?' Or by saying, 'It is my joy?'

Desiring God

J.I. Packer

"God's love is an exercise of his goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified himself with their welfare, he has given his Son to be their Savior, and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation."

Knowing God

Sam Turtletaub

"Why be mad when you could be happy?"

Dave Turtletaub

"No sex until you're married!"

Brother Lawrence

"I began to live as if there were nothing, absolutely nothing but Him."

Instantes

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida.
En la próxima, trataría de cometer más errores.
No intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más.
Sería más tonto de lo que he sido de hecho.
Tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes,
contemplaría más atardeceres,
subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos....
Iría a más lugares a donde nunca he ido,
comería más helados y menos habas,
tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió
sensata y prolíficamente cada minuto de su vida,
claro que tuve momentos de alegría....
Pero si pudiera volver atrás, trataría de
tener solamente buenos momentos,
no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iba
a ninguna parte sin termómetro, una
bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas
y un paracaidas, si pudiera volver a vivir,
viajaría más liviano.
Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría
a andar descalzo a principios de la primavera
y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesitas,
contemplaría más atardeceres y jugaría
con más niños ....
Si tuviera otra vida por delante.
Pero ya ven, tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.

Sarah Peyton

Having just attended that recognition of my grandparents, and then being privileged to read of the impact of your grandfather's life has really spoken to me, and encouraged me.  During this time of transition from college to the real world there are so many things up in the air.  So many ways my life could go, things I could attempt, ways I could spend my time here on earth.  But looking to the fully lived out lives of our older brothers and sisters in Christ reminds me that there is really only one thing I need to focus on; just one thing that I need to do in order to reach the end of my days and look back and say, "yep, I lived it as best I could."  And that one thing is to use the gifts He's given me to demonstrate His love.

June 20, 2011

Plato

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”

Mark Twain

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness"

Innocence Abroad

Jim Elliot

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

Dr. Seuss

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. "

Kluckhohn

"Studying [other cultures] enables us to see ourselves better."

MacCullouch

"In Zwingli, an enthusiasm for Erasmus and a wish to build a perfect community in Zurich as the great humanist might wish, jostled uneasily with a commitment to Augustine's pessimistic view of human beings' capacity for corrupting all their best intentions."

Kahlil Gibran

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

John Calvin

"This is what we have expounded above, that while we remain in this mortal life Jesus Christ is never communicated to us in such a way that our souls are wholly satisfied with Him, but He desires to be our continual nourishment."

Calvin on the Last Supper

Henri Nouwen

"I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me."

Finding My Way Home

A.W. Tozer

"Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life."

Henri Nouwen

We need friends. Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in times of pain. Although we speak of "making friends," friends cannot be made. Friends are free gifts from God. But God gives us the friends we need when we need them if we fully trust in God's love.

Friends cannot replace God. They have limitations and weaknesses like we have. Their love is never faultless, never complete. But in their limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way.

Friends and Their Limitations

Unknown

Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

St. Augustine

"How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose. You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy."

Margaret Werner

"There was no way that any of it could have happened without the ever-merciful hand of God: the power that simply cannot be defined, contained, or understood. And there wasn't a thing I could have done to earn it. It just was because he is! His ways are beyond comprehension or explanation."

Turtletaub

"Be rich in good deeds, be generous and ready to share and take hold of the life that is truly life."

Beth Moore

"We may not mind being under God's authority at times, but we often resist human authorities God places over us. Remember, God is sovereign. If you are where God has placed you--whether at home, on the job, or at church--He has established the authority over you to work His glory in you. And while He expects us to submit to our authorities, He also empower us for the difficult task."

Albert Einstein

"Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

John Eldredge

"There is no greater disaster for the human heart than this--to believe we have found life apart from God"

Chrysostom

"Poverty I do not fear; riches I do not sigh for. Death I do not shrink from."

Timothy Keller

"Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally."

C.S. Lewis

"A perfect man would never act from sense of duty; he'd always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is a substitute for love."

Chris Tiegreen

“We demonstrate a craving for the spiritual at the expense of the physical. And there's something about that statement that inclines God toward us in an unusual way.”

At His Feet Devotional (about fasting)

Donald Miller

There is a lot of money and power to be had in convincing people we can create an Eden here on earth. Cults are formed when leaders make such absurd promises. Products are sold convincing people that they are missing out on the perfect life. And political groups tend to scare people by convincing them we are losing Eden, or inspire people by telling them we can rebuild what God has destroyed. We all get worked into a frenzy over things that will not happen until Jesus returns. The truth is, we can make things a little better or a little worse, but utopia doesn’t hang in the balance of our vote or what products we buy.

All of this may sound depressing to you, but I don’t mean it to be. I’ve lived some good stories now, and those stories have improved the quality of my life. But I’ve also let go of the idea things will ever be made perfect, at least while I am walking around on this planet. I’ve let go of the idea that this life has a climax. I’m trying to be more Danish, I guess. And the thing is, it works. When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you’d be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you’d be surprised how much you like spending time with God.


Do I still think there will be a day when all wrongs are made right, when our souls find the completion they are looking for? I do. But when all things are made right, it won’t be because of some preacher or snake-oil salesman or politician or writer making promises in his book. I think, instead, this will be done by Jesus. And it will be at a wedding. And there will be a feast.


A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (pgs. 205-206)

C.S. Lewis

‎"You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body."

Mere Christianity

Unknown

"The reason most people fail is that they are willing to give up what they want most for what they want right now."

Vince Lombardi

"If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives."

J.P. Moreland

"We have a religious duty to think and to think well."

J.P. Moreland

"The Christian intellectual is here to serve a Name, not to make one."

J.P. Moreland

"Nothing that is worth doing is pleasurable or easy in the early stages of learning how to do it. But through regular practice, patient endurance, and proper mentoring, skills emerge and habits are formed that enable a person to be good at the activity in focus."

Denver Moore

"The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain't no final restin place. So in a way, we all is homeless -- just workin our way toward home."

Unknown

"Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but by how we react to what happens.  Not by what life brings to us, but by the attitude we bring to life.  A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes.  It is a catalyst...a spark that creates extraordinary results."

Jim Elliot

“Lord, deliver us from our sad, sweet, stinking selves. Oh why stand we debating whether or not children under the ‘age of accountability’ (whatever that may mean) are going to heaven when we are dead sure that multitudes round about us are pouring hourly into hell?”

Ann Voskamp

"The Lord our God is One and in Him, all the fragments of our life are woven into one piece. In Christ, we aren't ever torn. In Him, all brokenness is made whole, all moments are made holy, all pieces are made one. There is profound rest in this."