Quotes by Counselors - Page 19

Risk is the clue that our dreams are both real and great.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am the greatest obstacle to my greatest dreams.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sadly, I put my dreams to bed long before they ever had the chance to get tired.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Because a door slammed shut, we assume that our dreams were slammed shut with it. Yet before we surrender to a closed door, it might be wise to take a moment and consider the fact that any dream is far too big not to have a couple of back doors.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, anything that stands against you will always be inferior to what resides within you.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A label locks me into a definition that people use to control me. A vision graces me with an idea that serves to release me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To judge someone is to say that I have the right to define who they are, verses understanding that God has handed me the priceless privilege of discovering who they are.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending or this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
An idea without sacrifice, regardless of grand it might be, will never be anything more than an idea.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Once I realize that the tune I’m whistling in my head is the theme that’s driving my heart, I suddenly realize that the most important question I can ask is, “What are the lyrics?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If truth be told, the easy road is nothing more than an armchair in clever disguise. And if you look around, it seems that there are a whole lot of people in the furniture business.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
However far I’ve come, it’s probably somewhere less than halfway of where I could be if I simply believed in myself.
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
I do not walk into the storm unless I have been called into the storm. For the former is arrogance and the latter is obedience.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Surrendering is intentionally laying down the power I possess. And have I considered that the power I lay down is often more powerful than that which I’m laying it down in front of? Therefore, I would be wise to recognize that surrender is less the absence of power and more the presence of fear.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Because I have ‘chosen’ to see something as impossible, there’s a good chance that it’s not.
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
Apathy is unconditional surrender where we are driven into hiding by unrealistic fear, and firmly held there by the misinformed belief that we are helpless to do anything other than hide. Therefore, apathy survives solely on lies and can be completely abated by truth.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I often ask to what place I am running, for if I am unable to identify that place it is likely that I am running in a circle of the most circular sort.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The line that we chart into our future is often more a circle that brings us back to our past. And it might be that there is some hidden intent in charting circles in that we can feel like we’re moving when we actually have no intent of doing so.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To fall is not to fail. To fail is to never fall because I never got up in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why is it that none of the things I construct ever make me feel safe? The answer lies in the fact that safety can’t be created. It can only be found. And the only thing I've found that’s never been created is God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Bravery is not found in getting knocked down. Rather, bravery is found is getting back up knowing that you’re going to get knocked down again.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I cannot be afraid of being afraid. Rather, I need to realize that it is my fear that gives me the energy to wrestle that which I fear into the dirt that is soon to become the road underneath my feet.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The only reason I can’t jump in and engage life is that I’ve told myself I can’t. Yet I can’t helping wondering would happen if I told myself I could?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To seek the praise of men as our motivation is to abandon truly great things, for more often than not truly great things elicit the ire of men far more than they garner their praises.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think that it is infinitely wiser to accept the fact that we’re afraid, for in accepting our fear we are in no way granting it the power to crush us. Rather we are finally empowering ourselves sufficiently so that we can crush it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear tells me that while there might be a host of people who wish to stand beside me in times of crisis, the tangled wreckage is sometimes so enormous that the best of their efforts leave them stranded at a great distance. And standing desperately alone surveying the carnage that holds all others a bay, God suddenly taps me on the shoulder, leans over and whispers, 'how about a little demolition?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I must look at the 'nature' of God, not the 'nature' of the challenge. For the former means everything and the latter means nothing.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
God’s eyes readily see beyond our actions, for our actions are simply fear and selfishness pretending to be us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Most of our fears are borrowed. Since that’s the case, we should get busy returning them.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The power of a thing is not based on the power it actually possesses. Rather, it is much more about the power that we permit it to possess.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To intentionally pass on opportunity is to intentionally pass on living.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am brave enough to stand against those who have been groomed by fear, I will recognize that where I get knocked down is all about where life begins, and has nothing to do with where it ends.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Loss is an invitation to a journey of unparalleled growth, yet we seldom RSVP the invitation.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We tend to deny our humanity because in accepting the fullness of it, we would need to confess how little we’ve done with it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Either we are running ‘from’ what we fear or running ‘to’ what we fear. The former is a choice controlled by fear, the latter is an action inspired by it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The anticipation of loss is much more frightening than the actual loss as anticipation leaves room for the imagination to create that which, in all likelihood, will never transpire.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Either we are running ‘from’ what we fear, or running ‘to’ what we fear. The former is a choice driven by fear, the latter is an action inspired by it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
One of the most terrifying things I fear is not my potential, but how much regret I’ll die with should I never use it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The paralyzing fear of being lost is fed solely by the irrational fear that we will never be found.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
By choosing comfort we are in the very same decision choosing to miss every great thing in life, and that thought should be anything but comforting.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The assumption is that if I expend myself for myself in the end all I’ll be left with is myself, and that alone is frightening. But what I’ve failed to consider is that I have to expend so much of myself living for myself that in the end I’m really left with very little of myself, and that is unimaginably frightening.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The choice to avoid risk is the choice to avoid living, and to avoid living is one of the greatest risk of all.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fate’ and ‘coincidence’ are the mythological derivatives authored by those who refuse to see a ‘greater purpose’, because such a conclusion would naturally suggest a ‘Greater Being’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In a relationship with God, our most secret places once thickly cloaked and meticulously hidden away now stand before us utterly and entirely exposed. And it may be that this dreaded fear is the single thing that keeps us an arm’s length from God, and forever a single step away from His blessings.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To look beyond our horizons is to acknowledge that we’ve hemmed ourselves in by creating them in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I much prefer not to fall, unless of course I am falling into the hands of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Choosing a life of safety is safely choosing something other than life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I’ve really been doing is running?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear is often bred of an imagination that couldn’t let something be what it actually was.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear is a lethal killer of dreams, the greatest cancer that has beset passion, and a ruthless thief of lives stolen and buried in the decay of lives squandered. Yet the greatest tragedy of all is that the fear that destroys us is rarely the monster it pretends to be, nor does it possess anything close to the power that we grant it. Therefore, it is only a killer, a cancer and a thief because we empower it to be so.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What in the world would ever lead to me believe that life is a series of opportunities that are readily available to everyone else but me? What really leads me to believe such an atrocious lie is that I don’t believe in myself sufficiently to engage those opportunities in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The hand of God is wonderfully evident at those times when He pens stories whose lines we ourselves are far too fearful to pen or whose imaginations are far too limited to envision. And I would unashamedly suggest that the Christmas story is that very story.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Far too often, it is at the moment where we finally stand on the very precipice of some great thing that we turn and abandon it, for it is at these seminal moments that fear wins and greatness dies. The beauty of Christmas is that God steps over precipices.
Craig D. Lounsbrough