Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere…. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

All shadows of insecurity dissolve in the warm glow of persistence.

The job of the leader is to help disbelievers embrace your vision, the powerless to overcome their weaknesses and the hopeless to develop faith.

Most people live — whether physically, intellectually or morally — in a very restricted circle of their potential being. We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon which we do not dream

Even to someone as notorious as Madonna, I think Jesus would say, 'I'll help you experience the fulfillment that has eluded you despite your struggle to find it. I'll help heal whatever's driving you to affirm your self-worth in self-defeating ways. But I can only help you if you let me.

we can't be filled with the power of God until we let go of the false pretense that we can get by on our own.

Nothing is more fulfilling than seeing ordinary people turned into extraordinary followers of God, imbued with his Spirit and enabled by his power to make incredible differences in the lives of others.

As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, "The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars

Every crisis raises relational issues: Will you try it and handle it yourself? Will you find a new partner? Or will you and Jesus tackle the crisis together? In tackling the stuff of life together, you'll see that your relationship with God will deepen. In pondering Christ, you find that you are in fact living His life, and God is living yours. Christ in you and you in Christ. God doesn't lead you through phases or steps.

Whatever God calls you to do, it's going to be bigger than you are.

The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.