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Words
of Wisdom
"It's not about you!" "You didn't create yourself, so there is no way you can tell yourself what you were created for!" "Life is about letting God use you for his purposes, not using him for your own purpose." "The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator of it. The same is true for discovering your life's purpose: Ask God." "You are not an accident." "God never does anything accidently, and he never makes mistakes." "God specializes in giving people a fresh start." "Resentment always hurts you more than the person you resent." "Fear is a self imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be. You must move against it with the weapons of faith and love." "Possessions only provide temporary happiness." "Self worth and net worth are not the same." "Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason." "The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose." "There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose." "Never confuse activity with productivity." "Living to create an earthly legacy is a short-sighted goal." "At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity." "The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears." "When you live in the light of eternity, your values change." "The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking." "You need to think more about eternity and not less." "Just as the nine months you spent in your mother's womb were not an end in themselves but preparation for life, so this life is preparation for the next." "The way you see your life shapes your life." "The bible offers three metaphors that teach us God's view of life: Life is a test, life is a trust and life is a temporary assignment. "God continually tests peoples character, faith, obedience, love, integrity and loyalty." "Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test." "When you understand that life is a test, you realize that nothing is insignificant in your life. "At the end of your life on earth you will be evaluated and rewarded according to how well you handled what God entrusted to you." "Most people fail to realize that money is both a test and trust from God." "Life on earth is a temporary assignment." "To make the best use of your life, you must never forget two truths: First, compared with eternity, life is extremely brief. Second, earth is only a temporary residence. You won't be here long, so don't get too attached." "Eternal values, not temporal ones, should become the deciding factors for your decisions." "You will not be in heaven two seconds before you cry out, why did I place so much importance on things that were so temporary? What was I thinking? Why did I waste so much time, energy and concern on what wasn't going to last?" "None of us has given God the full glory he deserves from our lives." "We bring God glory by worshipping him." "We bring God glory by becoming like Christ." "Who are you going to live for- yourself or God?" "I invite you to bow your head and quietly whisper the prayer that will change your eternity: Jesus I believe in you and I receive you." "The smile of God is the goal of your life." "Every human activity, except sin, can be done for God's pleasure, if you do it with an attitude of praise." "Faith, not feelings, pleases God." "Life is all about love." "Because God is love, the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love." "Learning to love unselfishly is not an easy task. It runs counter to our self-centered nature." "Life without love is really worthless." "Four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationsip to God while the other six deal with our relationships with people. But all ten are about relationships." "After learning to love God (worship), learning to love others is the second purpose of your life." "Love leaves legacy. How you treated other people, not your wealth or accomplishments, is the most enduring impact you can leave on earth." "When life on earth is ending, people don't surround themselves with objects. What we want around us is people - people we love and have relationships with." "When you transfer into eternity, you will leave everything else behind. All you're taking with you is your character." "Time is your most precious gift, beacuse you only have a set amount of it." "The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now." "God's mercy to us is the motivation for showing mercy to thers. Remember, you will never be asked to forgive someone else more than God has forgiven you." "Many people are reluctant to show mercy because they don't understand the difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past. Trust has to do with future behavior." "Pride builds walls between people, humility builds bridges." "You were created to become like Christ." "The bible says that all people, not just believers, possess part of the image of God; that is why murder and abortion are wrong." "God does not want you to become a Go; he wants you to become godly - taking on his values, attitudes, and charachter." "God's ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually and become like Christ." "Why is this happening to me? Why am I having such a difficult time? One answer is that life is supposed to be difficult! It's what enables us to grow. Remember, earth is not heaven!" "Never forget that life is not about you! You exist for God's purposes, not vise versa." "God uses his Word, people and circumstances to mold us. All three are indispensible for character development. God's word provides the truth we need to grow, God's people providethe support we need to grow, and circumstances provide the environment we need to grow." "He (God) usually prefers to work through people rather than perform miracles, so that we will depend on each other for fellowship." "Becoming like Christ is a long, slow process of growth." "Much confusion in the Christian life comes from ignoring the simple truth that God is far more interested in building your character than he is anything else." "God is far more interested in what you are than who you are." "We are human beings, not human doings." "God is much more concerned about your character than your career, because you will take your character into eternity, but not your career." "Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: He wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven. This is our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility, and our ultimate destiny." "Nothing shapes your life more than the commitments you chosse to make." "Your commitments can develop you or destroy you, but either way, they will define you." "We become whatever we are commited to." "Change always starts in your mind. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel influences the way you act." "Babies by nature are completely selfish. Thy think only of themselves and their own needs. They are incapable of giving; they can only receive. That is immature thinking. Unfortunately, many people never grow beyond that kind of thinking." "Christianity is not a religon or a philosophy, but a relationship and a lifestyle. The core of that lifestyle is thinking of others, as Jesus did, instead of ourselves." 'It is never to late to start growing." "Many of our trouble occur because we base our choices on unreliable authorities; culture ("everyone is doing it"), tradition ("we've always done it"), reason ("it seems logical"), or emotion ("it just felt right"). "God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, he depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than he depends on our reading the Bible." "Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days- when your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when your out of options, when the pain is great- and you turn to God alone." "Problems force us to look to God and depend on him instead of ourselves." "Much of what happens in our world is evil and bad, but God specializes in bringing good out of it." "God's purpose is greater than our problems, our pain and even our sin." "Every poblem is a character-building opportunity, and the more difficult it is, the greater the potential for building spiritual muscle and moral fiber." "What happens outwardly in your life is not as important as what happens inside you. Your circumstances are temporary, but your character will last forever." "Since God intends to make you like Jesus, he will take you through the same experiences Jesus went through. That includes loneliness, temptation, stress, criticism, rejection, and many other problems." "What would God exempt us from what he allowed his own Son to experience?" "No matter what's happening, you can rejoice in God's love, care, wisdom, power and faithfulness." "Every temptation is an opportunity to do good." "The next sentence is one of the most important spiritual truths you will ever learn: God develops the fruit of the Spirit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you're tempted to express the exact opposite quality. Character delvopment always involves a choice, and temptation provides that opportunity." "For instance, God teaches us to love by putting some unlovely people around us. It takes no character to love people who are lovely and loving to you." "Integrity is built by defeating the temptation to be dishonest; humilty grows when we refuse to be prideful; and endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to give up." "Every time you defeat a temptation, you become more like Jesus!" "Temptation always starts in your mind, not in circumstances." "It is not a sin to be tempted." "Temptation only becomes a sin when you give into it." "God made every one of us a sexual being, and that is good. Attraction and arousal are the natural, spontaneous, God-given responses to physical beauty, while lust is a deliberate act of the will." "God's love is everlasting, and his patience lasts forever." "The battle for sin is won or lost in your mind." "Every time Satan suggested a temptation, Jesus countered by quoting Scripture." "Don't ever try to argue with the Devil." "While we worry about how fast we grow, God is concerned about how strong we grow." "Christlikeness is your eventual destination, but your journey will last a lifetime." "There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain." "Remember that your character is the sum total of your habits." "Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering." "Remember how ar you've come, not just how far you have to go." "You were put on earth to make a contribution." "God designed you to make a difference with your life." "Through salvation our past has been forgiven, our present is given meaning, and out future is secured." "A saved heart is one that wants to serve." "A non-serving Christian is a contradiction in terms." "There is no small service to God, it all matters." "Service is the pathway to real significance." "What matters is not the duration of your life, but the donation of it." "God never wastes anything." "Your spiritual gifts were not given for your own benefit but for the benefit of others, just as other people were given gifts for your benefit." "If others don't use their gifts, you get cheated, and if you don;t use your gifts, they get cheated." "Passion drives perfection." "Your abilities were not given just to make a living; God gave them to you for your ministry." "God never wastes a hurt." "Your greatest ministry will most likely come out of your greatest hurt." "God intentionally allows you to go through painfull experiences to equip you for ministry to others." "Don't waste your pain; use it to help others."
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