Quotes by Counselors - Page 4

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
The worst thing that I can do is humanize God. The second worst thing that I can do is deify myself. And the best thing that I can do is to avoid both.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I must know something in order to believe in it, what I am able to believe in will be severely limited. If I choose to believe in something in order to know it, then what I believe in can be boundless.
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
I often think myself to be so ingenious that I don’t even realize that my own plans may actually be my own undoing. Therefore, I might be wise to realize that God’s plans undo what I’ve done that’s undoing me.
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 most formidable way to lead is to serve. And while the perplexing oxymoron of such a grinding statement absolutely cripples us, it birthed a Savior.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have yet to learn that I am not designed to carry the burden of men. Rather, I am designed to carry the love of God so that I might soothe the burden of men.
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
Greatness untethered from God results in calamity unrestrained by men.
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 you want to completely destroy a child, all you have to do is mold them into your vision of what you want them to be. If you want to completely liberate a child, all you have to do is grow them into the person they were created to be. The former cannot see God in the child. The latter can see nothing less.
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
The world brazenly touts freedom as both the inalienable right and morally liberating justification to mindlessly play in the filth that lies all around me. And the slight bit of sanity that yet remains within me asks, ‘what raging madness would prompt me to incessantly wallow in the very things that will eventually swallow me?
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
Independence that has declared its ‘independence’ from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.
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
What is an adventure, I might ask? And in the asking, I might begin to understand that my adventures are sorely limited to the confines of my lackluster imagination. Therefore, an adventure of the most robust and wild sort must be constructed by an unlimited imagination. And unless I am mistaken, only God has an imagination like that.
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
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
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
Most of our fears are borrowed. Since that’s the case, we should get busy returning them.
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
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
Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort.
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
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