My Favorite Musings

Teaching a Bible Class at a 
High School in Korea

It's been intersting over the years that it is sometimes not the longest sentences or even sermons that grap our attention, and give focus to and bring change to our lives. It is that simple phrase, those few words which get seared into our minds and our souls that make the difference. Is it not a reality that great teachers do not take the simple and make it complex but take the complex and make it simple. If what is true can be easily remembered it has a much better chance of making a difference in our worlld
 Over the years I have tried to find simple ways to say profound things. This post although not having a consistent theme does in fact do so. The consistent theme is learn to say the profound simply. Many if not most of these quotes are mine and do not have an author assigned and I have included the source where i have  known the source and borrowed the musing from another.. Enjoy these and add your own favorites in the comments section of the blog..

With a wonderful Christian brother
the Vice President of Kenya

• A failure to envision the future is a decision to forfeit the future
• Tears are liquid prayers - Charles Spurgeon 
• To conquer oneself is the first and best of all victories.  --Plato
• You never know how important something is until you know how important something is! 
• When the Lord is your shepherd it really doesn’t matter what you’re going through, you are going through. 
• Has it ever occurred to you that when you pray, what God has to say to you is a lot more important than what you have to say to Him.
• If you don’t like the crop you are reaping you have to change the seeds you are sowing
• If you keep doing what you have always done you’ll simply get more of what you’ve got. Can you live with that? 
• Having counseled 1000s of people as a pastor I've observed that the first 100 years of life are the toughest. Rick Warren
• If you want to multiply your ministry to many learn how to intensify your ministry to a few 
• What happens to you is not nearly as important as to what you do with what happens to you.
• It’s not what you go through that matters, it’s who goes with you through whatever you go through that matters. 
• It’s God’s will that His church grow and his lost children be found! Donald McGavran
• There are really two primary reasons people don’t become Christians; one they have never seen a Christian, and two, they have seen a Christian. Thom Wolfe
• If it’s God’s will, it’s God’s bill! He still supplies!
• When we pray and answers come it’s easy to think it was just a coincidence. Just reflecting, I’ve noticed that when I stop praying I stop having coincidences. 
• The pathway through our trials doesn’t so much define us as deepen us
• "What lies behind us, and what lies 
before us are small matters 
compared to what lies within us." 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The problem with the church in the Western world is that we are a mile wide and an inch deep. Dallas Willard
• “People come to church to be built up, not beat up.”
• “The result of an increasing gap between our knowledge and behavior is…. guilt.”
• “Pastors should spend more time on the church that could be, than on the church that is.” 
• “You can’t get by with a low quality product in a society with high quality expectations.” 
• Television has had 2 impacts on the church, first it has increased the expectation of quality, and second it has shortened the attention span of the attendees.
• The impact of the iPod culture: “A church is more likely to grow with good music and average preaching, than average music and good preaching.”
• It’s not inscribed in the annals of unchangeable theology but we do have a tendency to assume the eternal childhood of the believer. 
• When as an individual or a church you begin to believe you’ve arrived it’s amazing how the problems start to immerge
• The abundant life Christ promised begins at the end of my comfort zone
• When you walk on water it doesn’t matter how deep the water is 
• Just thinking… there were 4 men in the fiery furnace. We know the 3 who came out by name. Why did the 4th man stay in the furnace? We also know his name. Maybe he knew that it was not a matter of if but when we would be in the fiery furnace and needed someone to protect and deliver us.



Some friends and I with Dr. Cho in his office.

• It’s called the Great Commission for a reason and that’s because it is not to be subjugated to the many good things we must also do. The danger in business and the church is to cherish the good instead of the great.

• Stupidity consists of doing what we have always done and expecting a different result
• The Church exists for mission as fire exists for burning. Llyod Ogilve 
•  The problem is always leadership, and the solution is always leadership. John Maxwell
• We are too near the crown to lay down the cross. 
• I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus