Quotes about Resistance

You would think the church and its leaders would be all for healthy leadership and whatever it takes to achieve it. But the truth is that there are parts of church leadership culture that actually work hard against it.

In this journey of emotionally healthy spirituality, we are talking about radical change at the core of our being. At least two critical forces hinder such a profound shift. First, the pressure of others to keep us living lives that are not our own is enormous. And second, our own stubborn self-will is much deeper and more insidious than we think.

Nothing sets a Christian so much out of the devil's reach than humility.

The encounter and separation, for all its wildness, is typical of the sufferings of love. For when a heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass.

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt: "The Fates lead him who will; him who won't, they drag.

You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

If I were your enemy, I'd disguise myself and manipulate your perspectives so that you'd focus on the wrong culprit—your husband, your friend, your hurt, your finances, anything or anyone except me. Because when you zero in on the most convenient, obvious places to strike back against your problems, you get the impression you're fighting for something. Even though all you're really doing is just . . . fighting. For nothing.

What a bitter, bitter thing is the service of Satan, even in this world!

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Foulgrin: If you can keep Fletcher from saying a definitive no to a temptation, you've won. Whatever is not a no is merely a postponed yes. (advice to the tempter Squaltaint)

His first step is to make temptation appear as a natural desire. It is something unequivocally physical and human.