Quotes by Counselors - Page 3

I have diligently disciplined my life to search out life’s gifts in the places where life stores its scraps.
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
We focus on the reasons why we ‘can’t’ at the expense of the far greater reasons why we ‘can’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I need to immerse the fabric of my soul in torrential nature of Christmas, and in doing so to finally understand that it is the very thing that can make the world what I so wish it were.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I see only my bias, I have surrendered to a single myopic lens through which to view the world. If I dare to surrender my bias, I will spend the rest of my life seeing the world and throwing away lenses.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living.
David W. Earle
Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget.
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
My soul is utterly frantic for that single place of perfect refuge from which I can clearly see the winds rip and hear the tempest tear, yet despite the ferocity of the tumult I rest in such a sublime peace it is as if neither existed at all. And if I have not yet found such a place, it is because I have not yet found God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Instinct is all of our humanity being deliberately honest with all of life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are not built for mediocrity, but we build it into our lives nonetheless.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The legacy I leave will be unimaginably enhanced by the legacies I received. Therefore, I must be wise enough to embrace the history of those who have gone before me so that I can shape the future of those who will go ahead of me.
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
Tragedy cleans the windows of the soul by washing away the bias of our lives in the detergent of pain.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without a beginning I am pouring the whole of my existence into the building of endings, while the cross and the resurrection declare that God is incessantly building beginnings from the collapse of endings.
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 drum to which we march reveals the conductor to whom we’re listening.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are quick to surrender that which we deem as long dead, when God is quick to restore that which He deems as never really having lived.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Possibly the most debilitating deception of all is to create a god of my own making, fool myself into believing that this limp god of mine is the true God, and then construct the entirety of my life on this flamboyantly fictional character. Possibly the most devastating realization of all is when the real God shows up, and in the showing up all of this come crashing down.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To only see ‘death’ in death is to somehow assume that death itself is a barrier so abrupt that God Himself is halted by it. To see ‘life’ in death is to understand that death is a sprawling horizon to a new beginning that God created long before death ever thought to show up.
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 greatest men stand on their values and pray on their knees.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is my faith so terribly pathetic that I have diminished God to the point that I doubt His ability to survive in the very world that He came to save? Indeed, I have done exactly that. And all I need to do to beat that mentality is to remember that a baby born in a manger with every disadvantage imaginable stills lives today.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I find that I spend a tremendous amount of time chasing the praises of men rather than sitting with the praises of God. The former is something I attempt to catch, the latter catches me.
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
I pray for sufficient wisdom to understand that wisdom apart from God is the stuff of opinion tainted by the rot of bias. And if I am somehow apt to confuse such rubbish with wisdom, I will think myself wise but find myself living in a landfill.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In one way or another, every mission that I have ever set out on to rescue myself is yet another mission that I end up needing to be rescued from. Hence, there is God.
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
Our prayers are something akin to delivering a list, verses surrendering a life. The former will always leave me creating the next list, while the latter will leave me creating a new life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father.
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
If the light we have is continually engulfed by the darkness in a way that makes the darkness even darker, maybe we should think about getting our light from Someone else before it gets a whole lot darker.
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
One of the greatest lies is to believe that we don’t have value. One of the greatest mistakes is to act on that belief. And the greatest liberation is found in looking at the cross of Christ and realizing the enormity of the lie.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The assumption of ‘rights’ is the cancer of privilege.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Shame is embarrassment multiplied against itself until it dies under it’s own weight and we with it. Forgiveness is freedom multiplied against the Cross until it flies under it’s own liberation and we with it.
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
In many instances, the failures of my greatest schemes ultimately lead to the fulfillment of my greatest successes. Therefore, God will allow our most cherished dreams to perish so that we might turn and seek out His most cherished plans.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You are greater than you can possibly imagine, if you would only free yourself up to imagine.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I’ve made out of my past, not the elimination of that mess.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When my vision is numbed by apathy and narrowed by mediocrity, I can stand in the presence of great things and fail to see even the smallest of things.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Dreams are ideas where the collar has been removed and the leash has been thrown away.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am the greatest obstacle to my greatest dreams.
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
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 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
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
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
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