Quotes by Counselors

To blithely discard the spent kernels of something that has ended is to discard the very resources that have painstakingly been harvested from that ending from which a spirited new beginning will be cultivated.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My wisdom absent of God’s wisdom is nothing more than a best-guess.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem that I think I have with God is often not a problem at all. Rather, it is most frequently a tired misperception where I have made God what I need Him to be in order to justify my rejection of Him.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I spend my life constantly calling in ‘imaginary’ debts that aren’t owed to me in order to avoid the ‘real’ debts that I owe to others, and so everybody ends up bankrupt.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Where am I?” you ask. Where you are is where the things you’ve denied worshipping have taken you.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have diligently disciplined my life to search out life’s gifts in the very places where society mistakenly says life stores its scraps. And I am constantly amazed that in the treasure trove that surrounds me, I stand in the company of so few.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We want a fresh start only because we didn’t sufficiently care for the last fresh start.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Blindness is a choice born of fear, nursed by complacency and groomed by comfort. And what I often don’t see in my blindness is that 'choice' evidences the existence of other options.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Heaven shows up all the time. But we plan our time so that we show up in other places.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we are merely a chance product of ‘random happenstance’ and nothing more, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that we have the ability to contemplate the question of ‘random happenstance’ with such methodical complexity?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Anything great will only be appreciated if I am given the opportunity to feel the absence of it, or experience the reversal of it. It is only then that I can even begin to understand its majesty and cherish it in the manner I should have all along.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would be an utter fool to let my journey be defined by the denial of the journey.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To assume that I and I alone have all the answers is to eventually find myself entirely alone without any answers.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe it’s a whole lot less about focusing on the fact that we’re all victims and a whole lot more about the changing the fact that we’re all careless, as that is what victimized all of us in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In a very tragic kind of way, sometimes things have to be gone before I fully realize that they were ever there.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When I’m at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be ‘how do I get out of this hole?’ In reality, the main question might be ‘how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To love those who hate us is to refuse to borrow their hatred.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Whatever the depth of our darkness, God navigated it eons before it was dark. And whatever the duration of our nights, God was there long before it ever turned to night. Therefore, despite our frequent feelings to the contrary, there is no place we might be where God was not lovingly waiting for us an eternity before we got there.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I so much as dare to intimately probe the reflection I see in the mirror, I am filled with the tormenting fear that I might be repulsed. God invites us to boldly probe the reflection in the mirror so that we might be released.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem with holiness is that once we look into the face of it we are no longer capable of taking that which is odious and filthy and somehow pretending that it’s translucent and clean. In other words, we have to do one of the most revolting things possible; we have to face ourselves.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are always immeasurably bigger than the little person we’ve too often doomed ourselves to be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The thing that I’m most likely to collapse under is not the weight of the stresses that stand around me, but the ego that sits within me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Who you are is too vast to be captured by the reflection of a mirror, classified by the state of your attitude, or categorized by the opinions of others. Therefore, if any of these are defining you, you have yet to be defined.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It would be infinitely more prudent to be a single “David” standing with God, than a million “Goliath’s” standing without Him.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I incessantly look for water in wells dug by men, and I have drunk enough sand to prove it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We would prefer all gain and no loss in life, yet that would gain us nothing more than great loss.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If you haven’t figured it out yet, an absolutely certain way to lose something as quickly as possible is to forget the privilege you have to possess it in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I tend to walk around convinced that any amount of forgiveness that I could extend could never possibly compensate for the offenses that I’ve had to endure. Yet, maybe the greater offense is that I’ve got that backwards.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
As it peaks over the horizon, does not a sunrise whisper the opportunity to try again. And if the day passes and our efforts were stunted by the bane of our insecurities or blunted by the challenges of life, does not a sunset invite us to rest before it whispers the same message the next morning?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The road from ‘here’ to ‘there’ is a map yet to be written with the pen I hold in my hand.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we’ve somehow become convinced that the script we followed ‘yesterday’ can’t be edited, it will be incredibly difficult to tell the difference between ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The road ahead is not some predetermined path that I am forced to trod, but it is a rich byway that I can help create.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To ‘live’ is to realize that without the journey the destination is nothing more than a task rigorously completed rather than an experience riotously lived.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we’re missing life it’s probably because we’re expecting it to reveal itself to us, rather than realizing that life is revealed by us looking for it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It’s really a rather simple thing to bring balance to my anger. All I need to do is remember that the ‘hand of cards’ that have been dealt to me pale in comparison to the ‘deck of cards’ that I’ve thrown at others.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It wasn’t until I slowed the car and rolled down the windows that I realized I spend most of my days driving ‘through’ life without driving ‘in’ life. So, I’ve decided to walk because the pace is slower and the windows are always down.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I don’t necessarily sit around inviting life to knock me down, but when it does I don’t wait around for an invitation to stand back up either.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem with the ‘herd’ is that our voice is never ‘heard’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it’s adhering to our scripts or not.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We live with this tortured feeling that we must create that which in reality we have the privilege of finding.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sacrifice is a passion that unleashes everything away from us so that it can be drawn into everyone around us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
For love to eliminate pain is to waste it, for it is love alone that possesses sufficient force to bend pain against everything that would break us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God’s love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The length of the fall is dictated by how far we had climbed. The outcome of the fall is dictated by whether we’re holding on to that which we’re climbing, or we’re letting God hold onto us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest men stand on their values and pray on their knees.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite my best effort to make myself as large as absolutely possible, life will always be larger than me. That simple fact makes God not only a likelihood, but a necessity.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe what I need to be rescued from is the feeling that I don’t need to be rescued, for without a doubt this is the most difficult rescue of all.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
There’s not much that I can find in places where there is nothing to find. However, to avoid facing God I find myself spending a lot of time in those very places.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My heart says, ‘This way.’ The world says, ‘That way.’ God says, ‘I am the Way.’ And if perchance I choose to listen to the first two, I’m going to find myself so far off the ‘way’ that being lost becomes the ‘way’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I’ve made, not the elimination of it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every tomorrow is an outcome of what I do today, and the beauty of it all is that today is happening all the time.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I’m perplexed by the fact that I’m constantly lost, maybe somewhere in my head I’ve determined that being lost serves a greater purpose than being found.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is the goal I’ve set been determined by a desire to avoid the goal I should have set?
Craig D. Lounsbrough