Quotes by Counselors - Page 9

My rather arrogant attitude deludes me into believing that my ability to understand something is the criteria for its legitimacy. And if there’s one thing in my life that I don’t understand yet I allow to be legitimate, thinking this way would most certainly be it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
True evil is unlikely to receive an invitation from us, so it clothes itself in just enough truth to make itself look appealing and then it looks to unpeel us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Pure, unadulterated, consistent love for God and pure, unadulterated, consistent love for others is the summation of all the law God has given us in both the Old and New Testaments. Of course, the problem is that we never obey these simple commands. We always love ourselves more than we love God or others. We are always erecting idols in our hearts and worshipping and serving them. We are always more focused on what we want and how we might get it than we are on loving Him and laying down our life for others. The law does show us the right way to live, but none of us obeys it. Not for one millisecond.Even though our children cannot and will not obey God's law, we need to teach it to them again and again. And when they tell us that they can't love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them. We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
Wouldn't it help you to realize that you really do live in an epic if your life had a soundtrack?
John Eldredge
And so to tame Christmas we spin myths to temper the story, we create our own caricatures to speak our own lines into the script, we gift ourselves to enhance an adventure now lagging, and we think we’re on a grand adventure when we’ve completely forgotten what an adventure is.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To be blessed and yet permit gluttony to blind me to the blessings is to banish myself to a life of unrelenting poverty even though I might be utterly engulfed in the embrace of a million marvelous blessings.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I had a single wish, I would wish sixty seconds of total depravity upon myself. For one of the greatest gifts of all is to have ‘nothing’ so that I can finally learn how to appreciate ‘everything’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Greed is the fast-track to poverty.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The dark might be dark, but at least we don’t have to look at ourselves when we’re standing in it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You would not ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel, so you cannot demand that the broken to live as if they were whole.
John Eldredge
We forgive those who harmed us. And then, with an open heart, we simply as Jesus to heal us.
John Eldredge
Contradictions are the impossible chasms that create forever separations. God is the forever bridge that creates impossible reunions.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
God is able to fix that which is broken so that what stands repaired is immeasurably greater than that which stood before it needed repair. Therefore, the most staggering brokenness conceivable is in reality the greatest opportunity imaginable.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To make matters worse, everyone she talks to has a different opinion about the nature of his problem and what she should do about it. Her clergyperson may tell her, “Love heals all difficulties. Give him your heart fully, and he will find the spirit of God.” Her therapist speaks a different language, saying, “He triggers strong reactions in you because he reminds you of your father, and you set things off in him because of his relationship with his mother. You each need to work on not pushing each other’s buttons.” A recovering alcoholic friend tells her, “He’s a rage addict. He controls you because he is terrified of his own fears. You need to get him into a twelve-step program.” Her brother may say to her, “He’s a good guy. I know he loses his temper with you sometimes—he does have a short fuse—but you’re no prize yourself with that mouth of yours. You two need to work it out, for the good of the children.” And then, to crown her increasing confusion, she may hear from her mother, or her child’s schoolteacher, or her best friend: “He’s mean and crazy, and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave him now before he does something even worse.” All of these people are trying to help, and they are all talking about the same abuser. But he looks different from each angle of view.
Lundy Bancroft
Why is it that we don’t worry about a compass until we’re lost in a wilderness of our own making?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am so often the architect of my own pain and the engineer of my own failures.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If those who cause destruction have come to be ‘newsworthy’, and those who heal the devastation of that destruction have come to be less than ‘noteworthy’, has our thirst to be entertained become the truly destructive thing?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In my impatience I become convinced that this desire of mine should have been fulfilled yesterday, when it belongs to a tomorrow that yesterday would have killed had I had my way.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We need days of failure because they help humble us, and through them we can see how God's grace is poured out on the humble.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
I've concluded that I learned far more from my failures than from my successes.
June Hunt
Sometimes we are so caught up in the disappointment of plans gone astray that we fail to recognize the potentially new options that might now exist.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Discouragement is the cancer of great things.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Of course I don’t want to get knocked down. But the single and sole solution to that fear is to not go anywhere where I can be knocked down. And is that not already being knocked down?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Most of my failures can be ascribed to the fact that I chose that which was ‘easy’ over that which was ‘right’. And while it’s ‘right’ to admit this to myself, it isn’t ‘easy.’ So, which choice am I going to make this time?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I’m conceited enough to believe I’m invincible, then maybe it will take me doing the very thing I swore I would never do to understand that I’m not as wonderful as I thought I was.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The real promise in too many promises is a promise that I’m going to be disappointed.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The reason placing blame repeatedly fails to work is that I repeatedly place it on everyone else instead of where it actually belongs.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Failure is blessing wrapped in the clothing of curse.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The fear of getting knocked down is less about the pain of the fall and more about the embarrassment in having fallen. And so, to rid myself of the latter is to reduce my concern about the former, which means I just unleashed my life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Failure is not the deterrent for the next try. Rather, it is information that empowers the next step.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Failure is a friend if we can see past the face of the foe that we project on it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The challenge is never based on the size of the obstacle that stands before me. Rather, it is dictated by the degree of faith that rests within me.
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
With God, being lost is nothing more than an idea that never has and never will be anything more than an idea.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hope is a fruit of proven character.
John Eldredge
1. We fear people because they can expose and humiliate us. 2. We fear people because they can reject, ridicule, or despise us. 3. We fear people because they can attack, oppress, or threaten us. These three reasons have one thing in common: they see people as “bigger” (that is, more powerful and significant) than God, and, out of the fear that creates in us, we give other people the power and right to tell us what to feel, think, and do.
Edward T. Welch
People build defenses around a weakness, not around strength. Where self-esteem is strong, a defense is unnecessary.
David W. Earle
When this low self-worth is hidden, one can understand why the person becomes hypersensitive to the opinions of others and has a great deal of difficulty accepting criticism no matter how warranted or gently said.
David W. Earle
It is very difficult to develop a proper sense of self-esteem in a dysfunctional family. Having very little self-worth, looking at one’s own character defects becomes so overwhelming there is no room for inward focus. People so afflicted think: “I need to keep you from knowing me. I have already rejected me, but if you knew how flawed I am, you would also reject me…and since this is all I have, I could not stand any more rejection. I am not worthy of someone understanding me so you will not get the chance...so I must judge, reject, attack, and/or find fault with you. I don’t accept me so how can I accept you?
David W. Earle
I say that my value is based on my accomplishments. Christmas is God saying that I am His accomplishment and that will forever be enough.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It has nothing to do with who I am as compared to everyone else. It has everything to do with who I am in companionship with God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite our battered exterior and in spite of the festering scars and rank filth that overlays it, there is underneath it all the pristine likeness of God Himself. And we would be wise to cast an eye not on the marred exterior, but to be fixed on the glorious interior.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I while away my time wishing I were someone else when simply being me is the most magnificent thing I could ever wish to do.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the pursuit of perfection is a way to prove our worth, in the end the pursuit will only prove our imperfections.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In evaluating ourselves, we tend to be long on our weaknesses and short on our strengths.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Far too often we allow the hurtful words of others to define us. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label.
Eddie Capparucci
Real self-worth comes from mastery, from getting good at something. It doesn't matter what. Then you don't have to worry about empty compliments. You don't worry about what other people think. You have self-respect.
Albert Borris
Timeless principles never age, and truth is as young as the day it was spoken into existence.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Purpose declares that the trajectory of my existence and the course of human history were intentionally set to collide at this precise moment in time because what I have to offer human history is desperately needed at this precise time.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Surrender is a choice, it is never a calling.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Will I someday pass into history having passed by God and therefore forfeited the opportunity to change my world and reap the blessing of being able to do so because I saw myself as inadequate to achieve either? And how long will it take me to realize that if I doggedly refuse to pass by God, my inadequacy is instantly irrelevant and I have in actuality begun to achieve these very things.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The war on Christmas is waged of weakness and fed by vision blinded. It is a war of intellect blunted to stupidity and calling begging at the feet of cowardice.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To assume that I can even begin to chart a ‘straight’ path is probably the best way I can take myself ‘straight’ to the very place I don’t want to go.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have forfeited our calling for the simple reason that we’ve ignored the God who says that the ‘possible’ is never bound by the ‘probable,’ and instead we’ve dutifully heeded the god of fear that incessantly says the ‘possible’ is anything but ‘probable.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The reason my life has wandered to nowhere is likely due to the fact that the focus of the moment has dictated the destination of my life, when the destination of my life should have been dictating the focus of the moment.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If sacrifice is not the theme of my life, there’s no sense telling the story.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To my own demise, I rarely ask why I’m hungry because I’m focusing all of my energies on getting fed. And if I persist in such a diminishing cycle, in all probability I will eventually starve to death because I have chosen to gorge myself on the very things that will keep me empty.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think myself so terribly ‘clever’ that the need for God is blatantly irrelevant. And all the while, in the rapidly growing mess that I’m ‘cleverly’ creating, I rather quickly begin to realize that the only thing that is relevant is His relevance.
Craig D. Lounsbrough