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Favorite Quote(s)
This morning I’ll be speaking at the Catalyst Conference.
I’ll be doing a talk called “Practical Atheists.” Please pray that God uses it to “disturb” some people (in a good way)!
What’s the best quote you’ve heard or read recently?
This one is simple, but it touched me:
“If the Gospel isn’t touching others, it hasn’t touched you.” —Curry R. Blake
Please share some great quotes. (Silent readers… quit being silent and join the family!)
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Good luck speaking today! You have so many people praying for you. I really love the quote you posted…it really makes you think. If I’m not touching others lives with the Gospel…sharing the Gospel with others…then it probably hasn’t touched me. Wow. You’re right. It’s so simple, but it is really profound.
Craig,
I am praying that God will bless your message today, and make a huge impact on the audience. I know your podcast messages have really helped me with my spiritual journey. Here are a few quotes that have been resonating with me lately.
“The only time you can be brave, is when you’re afraid”
“After all is said and done, there is more said than done.”
“Of every one hundred men, Ten shouldn’t even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters…We are lucky to have them…They make the battle. Ah, but the One, One of them is a Warrior…and He will bring the others back.” -Hericletus (circa 500 B.C.)
“Show me the man that you admire, and I will show you what kind of man you are”
“Success is measured in sweat and blood not gold and silver”
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
This is one of my favs! I get excited and inspired when I read it. I know you’ll be a blessing as you speak today!
*”I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, on a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek, at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble, because that is where He died and that is what He died about. And that is where church people should be and what church people should be about.” -George MacLeod
I promise I’ll be praying for you today!
Now for my favorite recent quote:
“The moral of the story is this…don’t pet the squirrel!”
Pastor Craig Groeschel
Blessings to you today!
Praying for you!
I heard the best quote on The Office last night:
“In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake.”
Profound, I know…
One serious. One silly. Here goes:
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company …a church …a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past …we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude …I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you …we are in charge of our attitudes.” - Charles Swindoll
“It takes a big man to cry. But it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.” Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
(I crack up everytime I think about this one!)
These quotes are from Reggie Joiner’s Facebook page. I love these quotes.
A hundred years from now the only thing that will matter is someone’s relationship with God.
Two combined influences make a greater impact than just two influences.
Presentation, not information, engages the imagination.
Change is not an option, how we handle it is.
I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn’t met me yet.
-Rodney Dangerfield
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-Bill Cosby
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
-Danny Kaye
“Divided focus paralyzes”.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. (Abraham Lincoln)
The only true freedom each of us has in life is the freedom to choose. The most important choice is who we will become. (John C. Maxwell)
Don’t try to be someone else, that’s stupid.(Scott Williams)
My favorite I heard from Mark Batterson:
“God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go!”
So true.. and I want to get where God wants me to go REALLY BAD.
“Never forget that people who follow us are exactly where we have led them.”
–Andy Stanley
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
–Leo Buschelia
“Be changed and the world around you begins to change.” –Gerald Epstein
“I’ve learned … that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”
–Andy Rooney
I heard it from Mark Batterson, but he was quoting Peter Marshall:
“I wonder what would happen if we all agreed to read one of the gospels until we came to a place that told us to do something, then we went out and did it, and only after we had done it, began reading again?”
Oh, and on a lighter note, one of my all-time favorites, from my professor at O-State:
“Baptists in Oklahoma don’t believe in pre-marital sex because it might lead to dancing.” — Mike Thompson
“Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity.” Maximus (The Gladiator)
When men talk of a little hell, it is because they think they have only a little sin, and believe in a little Savior; it is all little together. But when you get a great sense of sin, you want a great Savior, and feel that, if you do not have him, you will fall into a great destruction, and suffer a great punishment at the hands of the great God.
Charles H. Spurgeon, “Joy Hindering Faith,� (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 38).
“When you look at the cross you realize one of two things, either Jesus suffered for you, or you will suffer like that!!!” - Mark Driscoll
Craig,
It was great to meet you & I am disturbed & won’t sleep or eat for a month– thanks
We are at this moment as close to God as we really choose to be. True, there are times when we would like to know a deeper intimacy, but when it comes to the point, we are not prepared to pay the price involved.
Oswald Saunders
Beneath the clothes we find the man, and beneath the man, we find his….nucleus.
Nacho Libre
Craig,
5 min. ago i received two text messages from a friend who just finished watching you at Catalyst.
his first message reads “Your pastor just hit a Homeric”
his second message reads “Homerun”
Thanks for speaking what God has given you and for not getting in the way!
logic is a wreath of beautiful flowers that smell bad.
- Mr. Spock
one of my favorites…
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
–Billy Graham
My faveriot qoutes…
Christians are hard to tolerate, I don’t know how Jesus does it - Bono
Bless your heart - Craig Groeschel
Where does it come from? This quest? This need to solve life’s mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we’d be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. But that’s not human nature, not the human heart and is not why we are here. Yet, still we struggle to make a difference to change the world, to dream of hope, never knowing for certain who we will meet along the way. Who among the world of strangers will hold our hand, touch our hearts and share the pain of trying - Mohinder Suresh (Heroes)
[...] If the Gospel isn’t touching others, it hasn’t touched you. (Curry R. Blake) [...]
Phil Vischer wrote in his book, “Me, Myself, & Bob”, “The impact God has planned for us doesn’t occur when we’re pursuing impact. It occurs when we’re pursuing God.”
I get so caught up sometimes in trying to impact others and I forget about pursuing God.
Craig, prayers are lifted up for you. I don’t attend Lifechurch, but love listening to your messages over the internet.
Where’s the beef?
Jesus isn’t your grandma!
The brother’s don’t think I know a butt-load of crap about the Gospel… but I DOOOO!
-Nacho Libre
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. -Mother Teresa
“As long as there are hearts full of passion that embrace the face of fear, there will always be hope amidst great opposition and staggering apathy.” ~ CC
Excellent and thought provoking quotes, thanks everyone. Things have been difficult for my family the past four months and my prayer to God because I don’t know what to pray is HELP! So my favorite quote is:
“I AM�
BY PERSERVERANCE THE SNAIL REACHED THE ARK
-Charles Spurgeon
“Teach a man a principle and you’ve taught him to deal with a situation, teach him to walk with God and you’ve rescued him.”
John Eldredge
People do not drift toward holiness…We drift toward compromise and call it
tolerance.
We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom.
We drift toward superstition and call it faith.
We cherish the indiscipline of lost
self-control and call it relaxation.
We slouch toward prayerlessness and
delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism.
We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
D. A. Carson, For the Love of God
Perry Noble said this about people trying to go to a church and reviving it instead of starting a new church:
“Its easier to have a child than to raise the dead.”
“Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves. Gandhi put it well when he said, ‘There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.’”
-Shane Claiborne, Irresistible Revolution
The only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing … but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night.â€?
Jack Kerouac
“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” ~ Stephen Covey
“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.” ~ Tony Blair
“The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be may be the painful decision you refuse to make.” ~ Craig Groeschel
“God uses the insecure, risk taking, pain enduring idiots.” ~ Craig Groeschel
“As I studied the Bible, I found more warrant for a church led by unicorns than by majority vote.” ~ Mark Driscoll in Confessions of a Reformission Rev
“People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction, and you cannot hold them accountable to respond to muddled directives.” ~ Andy Stanley in Next Generation Leader
“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
love wins -
rob bell
“Only give if you can give unselfishly; otherwise you’ll never get back what you think you deserve.” - Heartland (TNT Television Network)
“I have a philosophy. I call it the hole-in-the-hedge philosophy. There isn’t much to it. You don’t bother much about goals, plans, accomplishments. When you see a hole in the hedge, and the grass looks greener on the other side, you go through. If you don’t like it over there, you can come back. You can even be fickle about it and go back and forth while you make up your mind. Something usually happens to make it up for you.
It isn’t a philosophy that is likely to make you rich or famous or even do much good in the world. I don’t recommend it to the ambitious or the overly serious.
But you have a lot of fun.
Also get into some trouble.�
Robert K. Greenleaf, 1954
My quote:
Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world.
CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH (2006: 9). Orthodoxy. Hendrickson Publishers.
But my life is worth nothing unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus- the work of telling others the Good news about the wonderful grace of God.
The Apostle Paul
Great talk today, Craig. Thanks to all who prayed it was a very powerful time and people were changed. The guy next to me was absolutely touched and he repented for being a full time pastor and a part time follower of Christ, as you put it and we prayed right there. Awesome. Thank you for believing God is real and acting like it.
“It is good to be a Herschel who describes the sun; but it is better to be a Prometheus who brings the sun’s fire to the earth.” - Phillips Brooks in Lectures on Preaching
“The deepest passion of the heart of Jesus was not the saving of men, but the glory of God, and then the saving of men, because that is for the glory of God.” - G. Campbell Morgan
“It is better to pray for pain’s conversion than for its removal.” - P.T. Forsyth
“Give up your good Christian life and follow Jesus.” - Garrison Keillor
“There are no rules here. We’re trying to accomplish something.” - Albert Einstein
“When you’re first, you get to be the leader.”
Andy Stanley
“Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance God’s Kingdom.”
E.M. Bounds
Charles Spurgeon
“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”
Great post…I had to go and grab these…but these are some of my MOST favorite quotes…
Enjoy, Melissa
“Whatever you can do or dream you can - Begin It! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
~Goethe
As sure as ever God puts his children in the furnace, he will be in the furnace with them.
-C.H. Spurgeon
When God is about to do something great, He starts with a difficulty. When He is about to do something truly magnificent, He starts with an impossibility.
-Armin Gesswein
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. ” ~Marianne Williamson
Catagories are artificial and mutable. -Robert M. Kerr
Praying for your words to inspire, get people thinking, and looking for answers.
Stacey
Well, this one just cracked me up.
“Is there a God? If not, what are all these churches for? And who is Jesus’ dad?”
-Michael Scott on The Office
and this one challenged me.
“How you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the creator.”
-Rob Bell in Sex God
“don’t pet the squirrel, weeeeeerrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhaaaaaa!”
Hey thanks so much for making so much resource available to the body of Christ. I love you guys!
Quote: Everything says something about you. BRIAN HOUSTON
Be blameless, give God no reason not to bless you! - Tasha Donnelly
Boy, I can’t believe I missed out on checking the blog yesterday. This is a brilliant post and I’m going to be using a ton of these quotes on my blog over the next few weeks. Thanks for doing this.
My favorite recent quotes:
The workshop of character is everyday life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost or won.
- Maltbie D. Babcock
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neiter victory nor defeat.
- Thodore Roosevelt
“God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible - what a pity we plan only the things we can do ourselves”. A.W. Tozer
“Why did I come in here?” Most forty somethings
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Thank you all for sharing some amazing quotes!
Thank you to those of you who prayed for Catalyst. I met some of the most amazing people. And we all met with God!
“preach the gospel and when necessary use words” Unknown
ps. thanks for the talk yesterday, really challenged me as a pastor and leader. thanks for being honest and vulnerable.
Thank you so much for your talk. I was challenged and disturbed. God spoke through you to me, so thank you. I will be digesting what you said for a while.
“God, I pray You light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for you. Consume my life, my God, for it is yours. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.” Jim Elliot
“My responsibility as a preacher of the gospel and a teacher in the church is not to preserve and repeat cherished biblical sentences, but to pierce the heart with biblical truth”
John Piper Desiring God pg 54
The only “church” things we must hold onto is what the Bible says, not what church has done in the past.
“Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.”
-St Francis Assisi
This is one that has really impacted my life.
“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.� St. Francis of Assisi
Got two for you:
“You will succeed in what you emphasize.” -Dr. Roy Fish
“Bless your heart…” -Craig Groeschel
I was there, and your words were clearly inspired by God! Thanks for the talk! It rocked my world, and I am now disturbed!!! Thanks!
A few great quotes from a favorite movie:
—–
Willy Wonka: So shines a good deed in a weary world.
—–
Willy Wonka: A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men.
—–
Willy Wonka: We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
—–
Willy Wonka: [Y]ou should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
—–
Willy Wonka: The suspense is terrible . . . I hope it’ll last.
Hey Craig… it is great to see your blog, I just found it…
The quote you posted is great…
I like this quote fro Martin Luther…
“Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.”
I pray that I would be a peacemaker… more than seeking justice… that quote reminds me all the time.. that our goespel is a gospel of reconciliation..
Colossians 1:19-21
19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
“Time isn’t something we have, it’s something we make.” (My former boss uses that all the time and I’ve adopted it as my own.
“Only do, what only you can do” - Andy Stanley
Thanks for the insights! - Dusty V.
I heard this from a pastor i met about 9 months ago and i can’t shake it.
“if your ministry suceeds and you lose your family, you lose!”
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.â€? -Anne Lamott
This quote haunts me because it is so easy to project ourselves on to God rather than reflect who He is in our lives!
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
C.S. Lewis
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Character is what you are when no one is looking…
If god brought you there… he will bring you through….
Craig, God used your talk in a powerful way. Our staff is still talking about it. Thank you for what you shared.
One I wrote in one of my High School essays back in the day:
“If I keep failure in mind, I will continue to fail until the failure in my mind fails, thus resulting in me again failing.”
It’s humorous, but true if we focus on the bad of our failures.
Oh yeah…there is no license needed to use my quote
wasn’t at catalyst, but heard God used this talk in an amazing way in several friends lives…
great quote i heard this week from chuck swindoll (he was quoting someone else)…here goes:
“When God wants to do something impossible, He will take an impossible person and crush them…”
sucks to want to be used by God
Heard this quote today, and was very inspired…
- Max Lucado
[...] Thanks to Craig Groeschel and the crowd at Swerve. [...]