There is a big difference between hurt and harm. We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow. It can be the source of huge growth. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.
Dr Henry Cloud
We must try to keep the mind in tranquility. For just as the eye which constantly shifts its gaze, now turning to the right or to the left, now incessantly peering up or down, cannot see distinctly what lies before it, but the sight must be fixed firmly on the object in view if one would make his vision of it clear; so too man's mind when distracted by his countless worldly cares cannot focus itself distinctly on the truth.
Basil
Short Biography
Let the mind of the Master be the Master of your mind.
Anonymous
God does not discipline us to subdue us, but to condition us for a life of usefulness and blessedness.
Billy Graham
Billy Graham Organization
So how do we hold ourselves to a standard without becoming legalistic? By relying on the Holy Spirit for both direction and empowerment. He will tell us what to do to resist temptation and grow in holiness; and He will give us the grace to overcome and follow through - when we do as He says. If our disciplines are not led by the Spirit, they are merely dead works - good as they might seem.
Joy Strang
Spirit Led Woman
If we would put some slight stress on ourselves at the beginning, then afterwards we should be able to do all things with ease and joy. It is a hard thing to break through a habit, and a yet harder thing to go contrary to our own will. Yet, if thou overcome not slight and easy obstacles, how wilt thou overcome greater ones? Withstand thy will at the beginning, and unlearn an evil habit, lest it lead thee little by little into worse difficulties. Oh, if thou knewest what peace to thyself thy holy life should bring,...and what joy to others, methinketh thou wouldst be more zealous for spiritual profit.
Thomas a Kempis
Thomas a Kempis Biography And Works
All the great temptations appear first in the region of the mind and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small and by reliance upon the word of the Spirit of truth. It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is as though He said, 'Learn to live in your will, not in your feelings.'
Amy Carmichael
Biography and Bibliography
Here, then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.
R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries
Gratitude... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
So often we are focused only on the things we like, we are good at doing, or we are interested in accomplishing. God wants us to use every piece of his spiritual armor. He wants us to be disciplined and grow in the areas of our spiritual weakness and the areas we don't necessarily find exciting or interesting. Our evil opponent is crafty and will try to attack us in the areas of our weakness and vulnerability. So let's not just commit to be diligent in the areas of our interest and strength, but especially in those areas where we are not.
Phillip Ware
Heartlight Magazine
Why wilt thou defer thy good purpose from day to day? Arise, and begin in this very instant, and say, "Now is the time to be doing; now is the time to be striving; now is the fit time to amend myself." Unless thou dost earnestly force thyself, thou shalt never get the victory over sin.
Thomas a Kempis
Thomas a Kempis Biography And Works
The goal of God's discipline is restoration - never condemnation.
Anonymous
Worship is the intentional attitudes and actions of focusing on God. It is the life-discipline we ought repeatedly to exercise and develop. It grows out of the foundational motive of deep and wonder-based gratitude to God for His salvaging and sustaining us.
Byron Spradlin
Artists in Christian Testimony
If a man have parted with something which he had, not knowing the worth of it, or the need he should have of it; he often can regain it, at least with pains and cost. If a man have been overseen in a bargain, and have bartered away or sold something, and afterwards repents of it, he may often obtain a release, and recover what he had parted with. - But it is not so with respect to time. When once that is gone, it is gone forever; no pains, no cost will recover it. Though we repent ever so much that we let it pass, and did not improve it while we had it, it will be to no purpose
Jonathan Edwards
The Works of Jonathan Edwards
Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson
Informational Website
I choose gentleness... Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.
Max Lucado
Upwords
Let us never forget that the Husbandman is never so near the land as when he is plowing it, the very time when we are tempted to think He hath forsaken us. His plowing is a proof that He thinks you of value, and worth chastening: for He does not waste His plowing on the barren sand. He will not plow continually, but only for a time, and for a definite purpose. Soon, aye soon, we shall, through these painful processes and by His gentle showers of grace, become His fruitful land.
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
Streams in the Desert
Spiritual surgery is more painful than physical surgery. God doesn't use an anesthetic; He doesn't do His work while we are asleep. God can take any brokenhearted believer and make him or her a radiant, loving person. But when He performs such "heart operations," His children are wide awake.
Erwin W. Lutzer
Running to Win
Everyone wants to change, but change demands desire and discipline before it becomes delightful. There is always the agony of choice before the promise of change.
Larry Lea
All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them.... But men's plans ignore the offence of the cross or despise it. Men's plans have no profound, stern or self-immolating denial in them. Their gain is of the world. How much of these destructive elements, esteemed by men, does the devil bring into the church, until all the high, unworldly and holy aims, and heavenly objects of the church are retired and forgotten?
Edward McKendree (E. M.) Bounds
Public Domain Texts
We Christians are debtors to all men at all times in all places, but we are so smug to the lostness of men. We've been "living in Laodicea", lax, loose, lustful, and lazy. Why is there this criminal indifference to the lostness of men? Our condemnation is that we know how to live better than we are living. The Bible parable says that while men slept, the enemy sowed tares among the wheat. A boy who rises at 4:30 to deliver papers is considered a go-getter, but to urge our young people to rise at 5:30 to pray is considered fanaticism. We must once again wear the harness of discipline. There is no other way.
Leonard Ravenhill
Archives and Articles
To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.
John Henry Newman
Biography
If your life consistently bears no fruit, God will intervene to discipline you. If your life bears some fruit, God will intervene to prune you. If your life bears a lot of fruit, God will invite you to abide more deeply with Him.
Bruce Wilkinson
Website
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson
Informational Website
Continual moderation is better than fits of abstinence interspersed with occasional excesses.
Francis de Sales
Biography And Works
Whoso neglects a thing which he suspects he ought to do, because it seems to him too small a thing, is deceiving himself; it is not too little, but too great for him, that he doeth it not.
Edward Pusey
Biography
God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.
William Gurnall
Online Works
God trains His soldiers, not in tents of ease and luxury, but by turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers and climb mountains, and walk many a weary mile with heavy knapsacks on their backs. Well, Christian, may not this account for the troubles through which you are passing? Is not this the reason why He is contending with you?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
God strikes not as an enemy, to destroy; but as a father, to correct.
John H Aughey
Bibliography
Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they "cannot meditate" should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.
Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill Association
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