“When you share your dreams with people who cannot envision more, their fearful comments can be discouraging. When people encourage you to live a life that yields less than what you’re capable of accomplishing, there’s usually a selfish motive. When the people closest to you try to confine your life to a small space, it’s typically not because they’re bad people or because they want you to feel like a failure. Most often they fear you will outgrow them and have no room for them in your life.”

“God never takes away something from your life without replacing it with something better.”

“By constant practices, deliberate repetitions and uninterrupted exercises, leaders go from zero to hero. They don't quit.”

“Worldly Christians look to God primarily for personal fulfillment. They are saved, but self-centered. They love to attend concerts and enrichment seminars, but you would never find them at a missions conference because they aren’t interested. Their prayers focus on their own needs, blessings, and happiness. It’s a “me-first” faith: How can God make my life more comfortable? They want to use God for their purposes instead of being used for his purposes.”

“JANUARY 11 FAITH GROWS BY EXPRESSION You are the light of the world. MATTHEW 5:14 Tom Allan, Scotland’s famous preacher, was brought to Christ while a soldier was singing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” He said it was neither the song nor the voice, but the spirit in which that soldier sang—something about his manner, something about his sincerity of expression—that convicted Allan of his wicked life and turned him to the Savior. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. . . . Let your light so shine before [others], that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16). Our faith becomes stronger as we express it; a growing faith is a sharing faith. Pray now for those you know who need Christ, and ask God to help you be a witness to them—by the life you live and the words you speak. JANUARY 12 ALL FOR JESUS We are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. 1 JOHN 5:20 In His Steps, by Charles M. Sheldon, tells of a challenge given by a pastor to his people to pledge for one year not to do anything without first asking the question: “What would Jesus do?” This challenge was kindled when a shabby man, mourning his wife who”

“Just because you go to church doesn't mean you're a Christian. I can go sit in the garage all day and it doesn't make me a car”

“Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.”

“There are few misfortunes in this world that you cannot turn into a personal triumph if you have the iron will and the necessary skill.”

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

“thoughts are things," and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches, or other material objects.”

“THE "depression" was a blessing in disguise. It reduced the whole world to a new starting point that gives every one a new opportunity.”

“More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.”

“I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.”

“Happiness is a choice, but grief is a certainty.”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”