Quotes about Responsibility

All their commitments to change have been subverted by the one thing they seem unwilling to do: take the focus off the other and put it on themselves. Here is the point: no change takes place in a marriage that does not begin with confession.

They were convinced that they had made the mistake of marrying a messed-up person; they were convinced that the other had made them do things they would not otherwise have done; and they were convinced that they had no power to make the other change, although they had tried.

parenting is not first about what we want for our children or from our children, but about what God in grace has planned to do through us in our children.

No parent is able to escape the deceiving power of sin. All parents need to understand the power of spiritual blindness as they think of the task that God has called them to.

You can take your life off your shoulders because God has placed it on his.

But God has not called us to erect a little family monastery. Please read carefully what I am going to write next. Monastic parenting will not deliver your children from moral danger.

It is humbling to admit, but I have had to face the fact that the greatest danger to my ministry is me!

Successful parenting is the rightful, God-ordained loss of control. The goal of parenting is to work ourselves out of a job. The goal of parenting is to raise children who were once totally dependent on us to be independent, mature people who, with reliance on God and proper connectedness to the Christian community, are able to stand on their own two feet.

Every leader is a package of God-given gifts and God-assigned limits. It is dangerous to focus on the one without humbly remembering the other.

When I gossip, I confess the sin of another person to someone who is not involved. Gossip doesn't restrain sin; it encourages it. It doesn't build someone's character; it destroys his reputation.

Ministry leadership is not a fortress against spiritual attack; it's the front line.

This means that my biggest, ongoing problem as a dad is not my children, it's me.