“...God doesn't wait for you to reach maturity before he starts liking you. He loves and enjoys you at every stage of your spiritual development.”
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Rick Warren
“If God never did anything else for you, he would still deserve your continual praise for the rest of your life because of what Jesus did for you on the cross. God’s Son died for you! This is the greatest reason for worship.”
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Rick Warren
“You didn’t create yourself, so there is no way you can tell yourself what you were created for! If I handed you an invention you had never seen before, you wouldn’t know it’s purpose, and the invention itself wouldn’t be able to tell you either. Only the creator or the owner’s manual could reveal it’s purpose.”
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Rick Warren
“Unfortunately, we forget the cruel details of the agonizing sacrifice God made on our behalf. Familiarity breeds complacency. Even before his crucifixion, the Son of God was stripped naked, beaten until almost unrecognizable, whipped, scorned and mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit on contemptuously.
Abused and ridiculed by heartless men, he was treated worse than an animal.
Then, nearly unconscious fromblood loss, he was forced to drag a cumbersome cross up a hill, was nailed to it, and was left to die the slow, excruciating torture of death by crucifixion. While his lifeblood drained out, hecklers stood by and shouted insults, making fun of his pain and challenging his claim to be God.”
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Rick Warren
“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it. God’s purpose is not limited by your past. He turned a murderer named Moses into a leader and a coward named Gideon into a courageous hero, and he can do amazing things with the rest of your life, too. God specializes in giving people a fresh start. The Bible says, “What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! … What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record.”
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Rick Warren
“When you live in light of eternity, your focus changes from “How much pleasure am I getting out of life?” to “How much pleasure is God getting out of my life?”
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Rick Warren
“POINT TO PONDER: I’m as close to God as I choose to be.”
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Rick Warren
“Bible says, “Know where you are headed, and you will stay on solid ground.”
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Rick Warren
“God is not waiting for you to get physically healthy or spiritually mature before he starts loving you or enjoying you. He loves you right now, and he will be cheering you on at every stage of your growth and development. He is not waiting for you to cross the finish line first. He is smiling at you as you run the race.”
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Rick Warren
“While it is wise to learn from experience, it is wiser to learn from the experiences of others.
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Rick Warren
“interior of his purposes…. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest”
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Rick Warren
“Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom said, “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest.”
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Rick Warren
“God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.”
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Rick Warren
“The fact that earth is not our ultimate home explains why, as followers of Jesus, we experience difficulty, sorrow, and rejection in this world.11 It also explains why some of God’s promises seem unfulfilled, some prayers seem unanswered, and some circumstances seem unfair. This is not the end of the story. In order to keep us from becoming too attached to earth, God allows us to feel a significant amount of discontent and dissatisfaction in life — longings that will never be fulfilled on this side of eternity. We’re not completely happy here because we’re not supposed to be! Earth is not our final home; we were created for something much better.”
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Rick Warren
