Quotes by Counselors - Page 21

To think that we grasp the fullness of life is to say that by holding a mere drop of water in our hands we are able to understand the immensity of the ocean.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Do I make up some ‘god’ in my mind, or do I make up my mind to know God?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The common theme of common sense is that it’s commonly rejected as uncommonly demanding.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
God’s genius is as wide as the cosmos, while by comparison our intelligence can find room on the head of a pin.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Intelligence and wisdom are certainly compatible, however they are rarely seen in each other’s company.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Most often, what I don’t know will have a vastly greater bearing on my life that what I do know.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Rather than being incensed by the nature of the bruise, maybe we should be inspired by the possibilities in the bruise.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.
Hugh Prather
Maybe the truth of it all is that we’re just too fearful to give our faith enough running room to realize that this precariously thin path that led us to the end of this life is dwarfed to obscurity by the infinitely vast byway that begins immediately on the other side.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Faith is the most unexercised muscle known to man.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I must not imagine what is ‘not’ as a means of escaping what ‘is’. Rather, I must understand what ‘is’ and imagine how I can make it what it is ‘not’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the fear of failure is slain cold by success that is already hot on the way.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It’s not a lack of opportunity around me. Rather, it’s a lack of faith within me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the absence of faith, our dreams will move from feasible aspirations to implausible fantasy.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am not at 'peace', then I can be altogether confident that I've placed a larger 'piece' of myself in the hands of someone other than God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
True peace cannot be found in a ‘place’. Rather, it is found in a Person who can be with you in any ‘place’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I scan the expanse of my heart and find it empty of everything except emptiness, it is because I ‘poured’ the whole of my passion into something other than God. And anything other than God will always be too ‘poor’ to be able to ‘pour’ back anything that can fill that kind of emptiness.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest prayers that I could ever utter come from the heart. And when I pray that way, I rarely need to open my mouth. Therefore, maybe I should think about talking less.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is when I am cold, alone, bitterly forlorn and shuttered from all hope that you will see who I truly am. And my goal is that at those most precarious of moments, what you will see is Jesus holding you through my tears.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My goals exceed the reach of my energies, but my God exceeds the reach of my goals.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Underneath the chaos there stirs a great plan. And it will be birthed only if I give it permission to do so because I have exercised the faith that it’s there.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I've been asked by lots of people, "What happens if you do kill yourself?" They want to know about what it would be like for other people around you, like the person who would find your body, the other kids at school, whoever would have to clean up the blood, what your family holidays would be like.
Albert Borris
When Sherri asks questions about who would find me if I killed myself and what their reaction would be, I think that whoever knew me would be sad. But then everybody would get over it. I would fade away. I don't think I'm that important to anyone. Nobody's opinion about me killing myself would stop me from doing it.
Albert Borris
I wonder if it will rain after we die. When you kill yourself, you don't know what happens next, afterward.
Albert Borris
They say that if you really want to kill yourself, no one can stop you. There are too many ways to do it. You can jump off a bridge or a building. You can hang yourself. You can crash a car or slit your wrists or swim out really far into the ocean until you drown. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not dead, if I really wanted to kill myself.
Albert Borris
When you attempt suicide, the counselors try to talk you out of trying it again by asking you about other people, which is good prevention if you care about other people.
Albert Borris
Darkness should never be an excuse to quit, for with God, darkness is the exact stuff that light was built for.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I’m ignoring behind me. Instead, it’s most certain to drop it on top of me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fairness is not something to which we are entitled. Rather, it is something for which we hope.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The worst of it is that while we continue to sink deeper into the muck and mire that we’ve created, in the very descent itself we ignorantly declare that in reality we are rising. And until desperation has crippled us sufficiently to confess the lie that we are lifting ourselves out of this mess, and until the panic of utter hopelessness has driven us to completely surrender all of the pathetic contrivances that we’ve fashioned that have put us there, we will never realize that God has readied solid ground that stands but a single step away
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The strewn and tangled wreckage that litters our lives is the precious raw material from which great beginnings are forged.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In my desperation, I have finally discovered that the only way that I can begin to fill the gaping hole within me is to be thankful for what’s there, and not angry for what’s not.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I have never had, or worse yet, I have lost the conviction that life (despite all of the blows it wields and the savagery that it spawns) is nonetheless an incalculable privilege, I will have in that single loss forfeited the whole of my life and effectively wiped out any hope that I can or will do anything other than exist.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Where there is no hope, there is Christmas. And where there is no Christmas, there is no hope.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
There was a moment when any hope within me froze solid and I was finally emptied of all energy to fight the cold. And at the very point of that very surrender, when I became convinced that I must bow to a world that would be forever frigid, God cupped the hands of my soul and poured in the warmth of Christmas.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The message of Christmas is a message of hope when all other such messages created by men can do nothing more than be hopeful.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The hands of man can manufacture many things both penetratingly brilliant and utterly astounding. Yet, despite their amazing dexterity and profound skill they cannot manufacture hope. Such a masterpiece as that is left for the hands of God and a manger crafted by those hands.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My fear of endings too often blocks my hope of beginnings.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Any dream that I am absolutely confident I can achieve should immediately be discarded for the simple reason that it is simply too small.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite all of our incessant tinkering, we can’t manufacture the things we most desperately need. And if perchance we do, they will never be more than pathetically emaciated facsimiles that will leave us emaciated. And until we finally realize that we can only ‘find’ these things, we will never sense any compulsion to ‘find’ God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate. Rather, it is something crafted hard by the hands of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the impossible is not an obstacle but an invitation.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I ask, ‘Is the cup half-empty or half-full?’ And when I ask that question, I am amazed at how many people have no cup.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Strength other than that received from God is just hype manufactured by men.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Once faith dies, the death of hope follows hard on its heels.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Looking back, I now realize that I left home in search of all the things that were right in the very place I left.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there?Should he not seek his own country?His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. Let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain – money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self – it’s not worth it.
John Eldredge
She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch.
John Eldredge
If I can draw the slightest smile across a single face obliterated by pain, in that act I will have begun to understand the power of an ordinary human being to perform the seemingly impossible in the life of another human being. And how can that experience do anything less than drive me to try and make the world smile.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Holiness leads to wholeness and wholeness leads to happiness.
Leslie Vernick
Truth even in the most whispered tones will always roar.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Things that are truly great need nothing from me, and to somehow think that they do speaks to my utter lack of greatness.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I simply look at the map that I’ve so tediously created, it will explain why I’m laying at the bottom of this cliff looking up.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
So, there’s this hornet’s nest. And there’s this long stick. And then there’s me. How I walk away from all of this will depend on whether I realize that some things go together and some things don’t no matter how hard you try.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If you can get others to believe that your random guesses are actual answers, they’ll never guess that you never understood the question in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Impulsivity is something akin to spontaneously jumping out of an airplane and not realizing that you forgot something until about five seconds before impact.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A lot of the situations that we put ourselves in are similar to a cat in a yard full of dogs. We rarely ask ourselves how we got here, (which doesn’t help with the question of how we get out of here), all of which rarely keeps us from finding ourselves in the next yard asking the same questions.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I'm in a hole because at some point I found a shovel and started digging. Maybe I should trade my shovels for ladders and start climbing.
Craig D. Lounsbrough