Here are some all-time favorite quotes that will hopefully fire you up:

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot

"Lord, make me a crisis man. Let me not be a mile-post on a single road, but make me a fork that men must turn one way or another in facing Christ in me." prayer by Jim Elliot

"Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best know in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"If you read history you will find out that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next." C.S. Lewis

"The real joy of our walk with Christ comes when we begin to press against the edge of our comfort zone." Bill Nix

"If you had permission to do what you really want to do, what would you do? Don’t ask how, that will cut your desire off at the knees. How is never the right question; how is a faithless question. It means "unless I can see my way clearly I won’t believe it, won’t venture forth." John Elderidge

"Work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God." DL Moody

"Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody; 40 years learning he was nobody; and 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody." DL Moody

"This book (the Bible) will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book." D.L. Moody

"Refusal to take risks makes for a life of mediocrity at best." Michael LeBoeuf

The essence of leadership narrowed down to 2 key points:
Leaders cast bold visions
Leaders make big asks (Bill Hybels)
"If everything is important, then nothing is." Patrick Lencioni

"The true gospel is a call to self sacrifice not self fulfillment." John MacArthur

"We'd like to be humble...but what if no one notices." John Ortberg

"We all need to ditch our captivity to "what will people think?"

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming..."Wow! What a ride!"

"If I have no love for others, no desire to serve others and I'm only concerned about my needs, I should question whether Christ is really in my life." Rick Warren

"Is the goal of my spiritual walk to bring myself (and family) more comfort in this world or is the goal conformity to Christ?"

"As a fully devoted follower of Christ, at some point in your life you must quit asking, 'What's in it for me? and begin asking 'What's in it for the kingdom of God?"

"The only thing Christianity can not be...is moderately important." C.S.Lewis

"When Christ calls a man he bids him to come and die." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The test of the vitality of a religion is to be seen in its effect on the culture." Elton Trueblood

"The average Christian has no non-Christian friends after he has known the Lord for two years." Joe Aldrich

"We only believe as much of the Bible as we put into practice."

"All that we work for comes down to this: get them to focus on this life and they’ll never think about preparing for the next one. Don’t let it dawn on them that their life on earth is but a dot. Or what they do while living in that dot determines the direction of their eternal line. Your job is to trick them into living not for the line, but the dot." Randy Alcorn
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The fundamental attribution error: We attribute other people's errors as character flaws. We attribute our own errors to our circumstances and our environment.

"Leadership involves getting others to willingly move in a new direction in which they’re not naturally inclined to move on their own." Harry Truman

"Work only on things that will make a great deal of difference if you succeed." Peter Drucker

"Tradeoffs: Everything is a trade off. Doing one thing means you can't do another. You can't do everything so you've got to decide which things to do. In deciding which ones to do you are also deciding which ones not to do. That's the tradeoff. (Good, Better, Best)." Keith Drury

"God’s goal is not to make sure you’re happy. Life is not about your being comfortable, happy, successful and pain free. It is about becoming the man God has called you to be. Life is not about you. It’s about God. He doesn’t exist to make us happy. We exist to bring Him glory." Chuck Swindoll

"Respect results with the least possible effort. Never substitute effort for accomplishment. Disassociate effort and reward." Fred Smith

"Great leaders lead with questions rather than statements."

"Set priorities with sooner being better than perfect." Lou Gerstner

"Fail faster and more often."

"Creativity without implementation is irresponsibility. Ideas are nothing without execution."

"There is no necessary correlation between how busy you are and how productive you are." Andy Stanley

"Most of us could summarize our lives around 5 or 6 defining moments--moments that if we had chosen differently would have radically altered the trajectory of our lives." Erwin McManus

"Increase the proportion of your time on the few things that produce the most benefit." Andy Stanley

"The secret of concentration is elimination." Howard Hendricks

"Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing." Andy Stanley

"Intelligence: the ability to make finer distinctions on a subject."

"No success at work can make up for failure at home."

"Efficiency--doing things right. Effectiveness--doing the right things." Peter Drucker

"If we take care of the depth of our ministry then God will take care of the breadth."

"The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life." John Ortberg

"Essentially there are 2 action in life: performance and excuses. Make a decision as to which you will accept from yourself--and those you manage. People fail in direct proportion to their willingness to accept socially acceptable excuses for failure."

"I might believe in the Redeemer if His followers looked more Redeemed." Fredrick Nietczshe

"No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him." D.L.Moody

"Practice the "First 5 Minutes". The first 5 minutes occurring between people sets the tone for everything that is to follow. For example, a public speaker is given very few moments to convince his audience that he really does have something worthwhile to say. This simple principle relates to family members as well. The first 5 minutes of the morning might determine how a mother will interact with her children on that day. It concerns the sheer power of words." James Dobson

"Successful men are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for comfortable methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do." Albert Gray

"As Christian teachers & leaders we are to bring comfort for the afflicted and affliction to the comfortable." Kimber Kauffman

"It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence." C.S. Lewis

"Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays." Andrew Murray

"Sainthood lies in the habit of referring the smallest actions to God." C.S. Lewis

"In some sense we are all hypocrites in transition." Erwin McManus

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." Peter Drucker

"Too often we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture." Brian McLaren

"Resolved, never to do anything which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life." Jonathan Edwards

"Character is doing the right thing when no one is looking." J.C. Watts

"Preach the gospel everyday, use words only when necessary." St. Francis of Assissi

"God is insulted by those who hold a "little God" concept, yet the biggest thing millions ask Him to do each day is bless the food."

"Have a strong bias toward action! Initiate, catalyze, stir things up! You can't solve big problems with incremental thinking." Bill Hybels

"God will manifest himself in direct proportion to our PASSION for Him." Jim Cymbala

"In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience." Richard Foster

"2 Laws that govern my life: The law of cognition: I am what I think. The law of exposure: My mind will think most about what it is most exposed to." John Ortberg

"It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick." Richard Foster

"Humility--not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less."

"Standardizing the ends prevents manager's from having to standardize the means." Marcus Buckingham

"In most cases, no matter what it is, if you measure it and reward it, people will try to excel at it. The things that get rewarded get done." Marcus Buckingham

"True risk comes not with action but with comfortable inaction." JFK

"The more I practice the luckier I get." Ben Hogan

"I know that half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don't know which half." P.T. Barnum

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Aristotle

"God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called."

"Almost always are greatest strengths are also are at the root of our greatest weaknesses." Marcus Buckinham

"When you fail to hold people accountable (for things that are absolutely right) don't ever think it is for their benefit--it is always for your benefit, it is always a selfish act." Patrick Lencioni

"Many Christians have what we might call a "cultural holiness". They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God." Jerry Bridges

"The level of our obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us." Jerry Bridges

"I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." C.S. Lewis

"An excellent way to test our values is to observe what we do when we don't have anything to do, how we spend our leisure time and how we spend our extra money." Eugene Peterson

"More people are sidetracked by serving materialism than by anything else." Rick Warren

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." C.S. Lewis

"I judge all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity." John Wesley

"Only one life: will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last." C.T. Studd

"Our entire lives should be about pursuing God and allowing Him to bring about radical Christ-likeness in us." Bill Nix

"You will develop more in the next 2 months by taking a sincere interest in 2 people than spending the next 2 years trying to get people interested in you." Dale Carnegie

"Out of 100 men, one will read the Bible, the other 99 will read the Christian." D.L. Moody

"The world can be divided into 3 parts: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who don't know what's happening." Bill Bright

"God plays a game with the soul called "the loser wins"; a game in which the one who holds the poorest cards does best. The Pharisee's consciousness that he had such an excellent hand really prevented him from taking a single trick." Evelyn Underhill

"Make a point to do something everyday that you find challenging. This is the Golden Rule for acquiring the discipline to do your utmost without questioning the desire to apply yourself to be the best; for when you want what you've never had, you must learn to do what you've never done."

"You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you don't mind who gets the credit." Harry Truman

"If we could understand everything God does, then he'd have to be a small god--small enough to fit in our little minds." Randy Alcorn

"Most Christians define materialism as a lifestyle that is one or two steps above their own." Tom Drake

"Sow a thought reap an action. Sow an action reap a habit. Sow a habit and reap a character. Sow a character and reap a destiny."

"Your character is essentially the sum of your habits, it is how you habitually act." Rick Warren

"Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence." Patrick Lencioni

"Discipleship is anything that causes what is believed in the heart to have demonstrable consequences in our daily life." Eugene Peterson

"Wherever you are be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. Jim Elliot

"4 things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, time past, the neglected opportunity."

"Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself."

"Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to common purpose, and having the character which inspires confidence."

"One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement...It is easy to laugh at men's ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word. William Barclay

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing." CS Lewis--Screwtape Letters

"If someone travels far enough away from Christianity, he may be able to look back and see it in perspective. But if he drifts from the core creed while surrounded with nominal Christianity, he'll remain blind to the true faith he no longer embraces. Infect them with a small dose of counterfeit Christianity, and it'll immune them to the real disease." Randy Alcorn

"Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." CS Lewis--Screwtape Letters

"Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it", while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth which is just what we want." CS Lewis--Screwtape Letters

"Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable sinning is not biblical grace. God's grace never encourages us to live in sin, on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth." Randy Alcorn

"Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism." Philip Yancey

"Cheap grace replaces truth with tolerance, lowering the bar so everyone can jump over it and we can all feel good about ourselves." Randy Alcorn

"People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." D.A. Carson

"NO COMPROMISE is what the whole Gospel of Jesus is all about... "For I tell you...no man can serve two masters..." (Matt 6:24). In a day when believers seem to be trying to please both the world and the Lord (which is an impossible thing), when people are far more concerned about offending their friends than offending God, there is only one answer... Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him (Luke 9:23) Keith Green

"The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints." Henri Nouwen

"The Bible teaches that a minimalistic approach to doctrine should be an embarrassment to mature Christians. The question is not, "How little can I know and still get to heaven?" The question for the Christian is, "Given my time, resources, and abilities, how much can I learn, and how much can I teach my family and others about God's word?"

"Rather than growing bigger churches we should be concerned with growing bigger Christians." Rich Mullins

"We inoculate the world with a mild form of Christianity so that it will be immune from the real thing. The aim of such inoculation is security, not security in Christ, but security from Christ and from having to rely on Him and the shape of His Kingdom to give meaning and significance to our lives." E. Stanley Jones

"A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we would call "holy expectancy". They believed they would actually hear the voice of God. It was not surprising to them that the building in which they met shook with the power of God." Richard Foster

"Watch how much of our speech is aimed at justifying our actions. We find it almost impossible to act and allow the act to speak for itself. No, we must explain it, justify it, demonstrate the righteousness of it. Why do we feel this compulsion to set the record straight? Because of pride and fear, because our reputations are at stake." Richard Foster

"Most of us professing Christians, from liberals to fundamentalists remain practical atheist in most of our lives." Stanley Hauerwas

"What would my family and friends say is the driving force of my life? What do I want it to be?" Rick Warren

"Most of us are alcoholics when it comes to material things." Rich Nathan

"Some wish to live within the sound of the Church bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of the gates of hell." C.T. Studd

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"To make the best use of your life, you must never forget 2 truths: 1st: compared with eternity, life is extremely brief. 2nd: earth is only a temporary residence." Rick Warren

"Too often I looked at being relevant, popular and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. The truth, however is that these are not vocations but temptations." Henri Nouwen

"In our final moments we all realize that relationships are what life is all about. Wisdom is learning that truth sooner rather than later." Rick Warren

"God, whether I get anything else done today, I want to make sure that I spend time loving you and loving other people--because that's what life is all about." Rick Warren

"In short, Jesus moved the emphasis from God's holiness (exclusive) to God's mercy (inclusive). Instead of the message "no undesirables allowed" he proclaimed, "In God's kingdom there are no undesirables." Philip Yancey

Reply to critics: I like the way I do it better than the way you don't.

"We are saved by faith alone. However, faith that saves is never alone...it is always accompanied by works." Martin Luther

"It ought to be the business of everyday to prepare for our final day." Matthew Henry

"Human conversation is largely an endless attempt to convince others that we are more assertive or clever or generous or successful than they might think if we did not carefully educate them." John Ortberg

"You are the way you are because that's the way you want to be. If you really wanted to be any different, you would be in the process of changing right now." Fred Smith

"There is nothing I am less good at than love. I am far better in competition than in love. I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark than I am at figuring out how to love another. I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way. And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily—open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride". Eugene Peterson
"This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." George Bernard Shaw

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even those who hang themselves." Blaise Pascal

"You are the same today as you will be in 5 years, except for 2 things, the people you meet and the books you read." Charlie "Tremendous" Jones see his site @ www.executivebooks.com

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscious but shouts to us in our pains. Suffering is God's megaphone in a deaf world." C.S.Lewis

"Obedience is the only validation of your salvation. It is the only possible indication that you recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ." John MacArthur

"Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but it screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition. Richard Foster

Related to denominational differences..."In the essentials--unity, in the non-essentials--freedom, in all things--love." John Wesley

"Shouldn't atheist have an equal obligation to explain pleasure in a world of randomness. Where does pleasure come from?" GK Chesterton

"Grace Abuse or cheap grace: Why be good if you know in advance you will be forgiven? This is the wrong question, the right question is...Why Love? Do you ask your wife, "How far can I go with other women?" Phillip Yancey

"The Christian ideal has not been found tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried." GK Chesterton

"New Testament Christianity does not hang out at headquarters we must get into the trenches."

"If you are fortunate enough to have a job, do it with all your heart. But remember that although it is a vital part of your life, it is only a part, and although you may rise to great heights, somebody else will one day take your place at the work bench or at the boardroom table. Nobody will ever take your place as the father of the child you are now cradling in your arms. You may well work for the best part of half a century, but the time you have been given to pass on the things that matter to your child is so very limited. There will be many demands on your time, and you will not always be able to give your children the time they ask. But so far as is possible, count the days. Try not to miss one of them." Rob Parsons

"A prayerless Christian is like a bus driver trying alone to push his bus out of a ditch because he doesn't know Clark Kent is on board. If you knew, you would ask." John Piper

"The Crisis of Belief--An encounter with God requires faith. Encounters with God are God-sized. What you do in response to God's revelation reveals what you believe about God. True faith requires action." Blackaby & King

"Prayer is self surrender." Gordon MacDonald

"Whenever faith seems an entitlement or a measuring rod, we cast our lot with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away." Phillip Yancey

"Real and total freedom can only be found through downward mobility." Henry Nouwen

"Jesus Christ did not come into this world to make bad people good, he came into this world to make dead people live." Lee Stroebel

"Work harder on yourself than you do on your job" Jim Rohn check out his site @ www.jimrohn.com

"Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I choose to respond to it." Chuck Swindoll check out his site @ www.insight.org

"Prayer is the key to unlocking God's prevailing power in our lives." Bill Hybels check out his site @ www.willowcreek.com

"The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace." Phillip Yancey

"You either run the day or the day runs you."

"You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay?" Jim Rohn

"How would your day unfold if you believed that God wants your borders expanded at all times with every person and if you were confident that God's powerful hand is directing you even as you minister?" Bruce Wilkinson

"The reason why many say they do not believe in God...they look at this collection of "saints" called the church and say that they cannot see anybody who looks much different from somebody who does not believe." Stanley Hauerwas

"What I'm calling for is a radically different way of thinking about our world. Instead of running from it, we need to rush into it. And instead of just hanging outside the fringes of our culture, we need to be right smack dab in the middle of it." Bob Briner

"God only allows us so many opportunities with our children to read a story, go fishing, play catch, and say our prayers together. Try not to miss one of them. The office can wait. It will still be there after the children are gone." Rob Parsons

"Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-tops." Gordon MacDonald

"Work to learn, don't work for money." Robert Kiyosaki

"It is the lack of self-discipline that is the #1 delineating factor between the rich, poor and middle class." Robert Kiyosaki

"For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it." John Ortberg

"A helpful indicator of the type of leader you are comes from the observations and comments of those who know you best. None of us has the ability to objectively assess who we are or how we perform. If you doubt this, sit in on a dozen or so job interviews or employee performance reviews. The disconnect between self-perception and reality is frequently alarming." George Barna

"Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day, while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either success or failure." Jim Rohn

"Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace." Phillip Yancey

"Most organizations are built on 2 flawed assumptions about people; each person can learn to be competent in almost anything. Each person's greatest room for growth is in his area of greatest weakness. 2 Assumptions that guide the world's best managers; each person's talents are enduring and unique. Each person's greatest room for growth is in the area of his or her greatest strength. Buckingham & Clifton

"Research has shown that one's thought life influences every aspect of one's being. Whether we are filled with confidence or fear depends on the kind of thoughts that habitually occupy our minds." John Ortberg

"Despite all the fancy buildings, sophisticated programs and highly visible presence, it is my contention that the church is almost a non-entity when it comes to shaping culture." Bob Briner check out the site www.roaring-lambs.org

"Sin carries with it a certain moral myopia...it distorts our ability to detect its presence." John Ortberg

"My faith isn't in the idea that I'm more moral than anybody else. My faith is in the idea that God and His love are greater than whatever sins any of us commit." Rich Mullins

"It seems we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture." Brian McLaren

"How much energy do we modern Christians put into condemning sexual sins compared to avoiding the judgmental, Pharisaical attitude of those with rocks in their hands? Who killed Jesus, adulterers or Pharisees?" Brian McLaren

"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians--when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths." Joe Aldrich

"I defy you to read the life of any saint that has ever adorned the life of the Church without seeing at once that the greatest characteristic in the life of that saint was discipline and order. Invariably it is the universal characteristic of all the outstanding men and women of God."

"We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and rekon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it." John Ortberg

"Christianity has to do with learning to do by reflex action that which you first learned to do by duty and discipline." Fred Smith

"Prayer as a relationship is probably your best indication about the health of your love relationship with God. If your prayer life has been slack, your lover relationship has grown cold." John Piper

"Weak prayers = weak faith. If we really believed in the power of prayer we would surely do it more often." Bill Hybels

"Salvation is completely unmerited (undeserved grace) but it is not unconditional." John Piper

"Acts done to impress, cease to have value as training for life in the kingdom." John Ortberg

"You can never have a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." John Wooden

"Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy...He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"If I appear to be great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without Him and helping me to keep little in my own eyes. He does use me. But I'm so concerned that He uses me and that it is not of me the work is done. The ax cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, he used it. The moment he throws it aside it becomes only old iron. Oh, that I may never lose sight of this. The spiritual leader of today is in all probability one who yesterday expressed his humility by working gladly and faithfully in second place." Samuel Logan Brengle

"Discipline--the decision to do today what most people won't so I can have tomorrow what most people won't. Discipline is delayed gratification. The key to delayed gratification is advanced decision making."

"What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we already are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline."

"True contentment is found when you are living directly in the center of God's will."

"People never drift in a north bound direction. The drift in human nature is always south bound without the intervention of the Holy Spirit."

"Entrance to Heaven is all about faith and grace. Rewards in Heaven are all about our works on earth." Josh Hunt

"We must all suffer from one of two pains in life: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons." Jim Rohn

The Law of Diminishing Intent--Time kills all good intentions that are not acted upon quickly.

"Men do not decide their future. They decide their habits and their habits decide their future."

"God has given me special gifts and resources to help me become the person He intends for me to be. That is His gift to me. I must choose daily to manage these gifts and resources for His glory and not my own. That is my gift to Him."

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." Vince Lombardi

"Throughout the Bible, God shows a marked preference for "real" people over "good" people." Phillip Yancey

"The poor man and woman of the gospel have made peace with their flawed existence. They are aware of their lack of wholeness, their brokenness, the simple fact that they don't have it all together. While they do not excuse their sin, they are humbly aware that sin is precisely what has caused them to throw themselves at the mercy of the Father. They do not pretend to be anything but what they are: sinners saved by grace." Brennan Manning

Parkinsons Law: Work expands to meet the time alloted. Expenses rise to equal income. If you can overcome Parkinson's Law you will win by default in comparison with your peers because they can't do it.

Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self-reflective acts of any kind, whether of self-congratulation or of self-despair. Forget the things that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God. This quote has been of unspeakable value to me. When the temptation comes, as it mostly does to every worker after the performance of any service, to indulge in these reflections, either of one sort or the other, I turn from them at once and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule the mistakes, and to bless it as he chooses. I believe there would be far fewer "blue Mondays" for ministers of the Gospel if they would adopt this plan. Hannah Whitall Smith

Introspection can easily become the tool of Satan, who is called the accuser. One of his chief weapons is discouragement. He knows that if he can make us discouraged and dispirited we will not fight the battle for holiness. Jerry Bridges

The 4 Laws of Unseized Time: 1) Unseized time flows toward my weakness. 2) Unseized time comes under the influence of dominant people in my world. 3) Unseized time surrenders to the demands of all emergencies. 4) Unseized time gets invested in things that gain public. acclamation. Gordon MacDonald

"There are thousands of professing Christians who think they have been justified, who think their sins are forgiven and that they are on their way to heaven, who show no evidence of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in their lives." Jerry Bridges

A person once asked Confucius, "What surprises you most about mankind?" Confucius answered, "They lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore health. By thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future and they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they never lived."

"Enemy occupied territory--that is what the world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage." CS Lewis

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Cantebury if the United State's plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answer by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It became very quiet in the room.