Particularly at times like these, there appears to be this morbid and seemingly trance-like focus on all that’s wrong in our world. This negative focus generates a debilitating sense of hopelessness that seems to exponentially grow to catastrophic proportions and beyond.
We need to be painfully honest about the difficulties in our world, for to state that they are anything less than formidable would be as much of an abuse as our excessive focus upon them. Yes, we have our challenges. However, we have phenomenal resources both ignored and hidden that when called to rise up are stunningly and surprisingly formidable.
This month’s newsletter is written fully acknowledging the difficulties that beset our world. However, it focuses on calling up and calling out the stunning resources inherent within each of us that are amply capable of turning the tide.
The quotes included here are not meant as some inspiring call that may momentarily rouse us to great hope but not deliver any change because they were the stuff of muse or idealism. Nor are they some motivational pep talk that will fall achingly hollow when the reality of life hits. Any of that would only serve to deepen the darkness.
Rather, I have written them based on what I have repeatedly witnessed when people step out of themselves and step into what God created them to be. When that happens, tides turn, miracles happen, and worlds are change.
May these quotes challenge you to step out and step up during these difficult times in ways that turn the tide and change the world in you and around you:
Celebrating Our Great Good
“There’s plenty of things that are wrong in our world, and we can give them free reign to completely define our view of the world. Or we can focus on the fact that what’s wrong with the world are the essential raw materials from which a person of determination crafts everything which is right.”
“I am here to tell you that the limitations that you see within yourself are a manifestation of everything except yourself.”
“Let us not fall prey to the leaching negativity and rank pessimism that runs unleashed all around us. Rather, with the utmost determination we must bring ourselves to understand that these lies have been given legitimacy by people who thought themselves as powerless in the face of them, rather than recognizing that we have the power to rip the face off of them.”
“I will never know the extent to which I can change the world until I change my attitude about my ability to change the world.”
“We may not necessarily be all that gifted, but we certainly have passion. And maybe we should start understanding that passion is a gift of such importance that without it any other gift doesn’t matter. Therefore, we are gifted indeed.”
“Do you fear taking on the task of changing the world because a task of this magnitude as held against the puny totality of who you are suggests that such a task is ridiculous beyond imagination? Well, imagine God standing beside you and then what can you imagine?”
“I will spend my life believing in you so that you will someday commit to doing the same.”
“You are a world changer, for you can be nothing less. Whether that’s changing one life or a million lives, you come equipped to change everything that is less than what God designed it to be. And I know that you are a world changer because I have met tens of thousands of people, and in all of those many encounters I have yet to meet a person who is not.”
“You are fully and magnificently equipped to stand up and change the world around you. And to simply sit down and tolerate the world around you is to squander who you are in the process of never being who you are.”
“I am begging you to let nothing shackle you that God has sent you to unshackle.”
“I’ve sat with tens of thousands of people and I’ve stared into as many empty eyes. And I must say that the inexplicable contradiction for me is that despite the gaping emptiness engulfing every one of these eyes, there yet lies within each one a wonderfully formidable gifting, an irrepressible energy, a depth yet undiscovered, riches unfathomed, and the resources to amply transform this ever-darkening world. And I’ve seen enough eyes to know that if yours are also empty, like everyone else’s they are also full.”
“You, yes you are the impossible waiting to happen. And the only reason that that sounds impossible to you is that you haven’t been daring enough to push the possible out to the point where it becomes what you once mistook for the impossible.”
“Pull every dream that you’ve ever had from all of the places that you’ve abandoned them, brush them off, set them in front of yourself, run the fingers of your heart over each of them, fight the lie that you’re not enough to achieve them, and realize that the dream was not too big. Rather, the belief in yourself is too small.”
“Stand up and be the light that God created you to be. Stand with me and the millions of others like both of us who have bowed before this inexplicably marvelous God of ours and in the bowing have begged that He not let us die until the darkness in the world around us has died first.”
“One thing that I know for certain is that you are untapped potential. But the one thing that I don’t know for certain is if you’re going to un-tap it. For it you don’t, we will all be the lesser for it. And that I know for certain.”
“Don’t be fooled. Greatness is not the catalyst of great change. Rather, the catalyst of great change is the common man deciding to walk with the uncommon God. Therefore, all of us are only one decision away from changing everything.”
“It’s not the gifts or the abilities or the talents that equip us to accomplish great things. Rather, it’s the persistent and adamantly stubborn conviction that we will in no way leave the world the way that we found it. And I would rather join hands with a single person of this kind than sit with a million gifted people who are not of this kind.”
“I am convinced beyond words to convey that prayer is infinitely more than the mindless ranting of some poor, delusional soul talking to some imaginary friend in some imaginary place. Oh, to the contrary. Prayer is the manifest pleading of a soul worn raw that, by the simple act of prayer, unleashes untold forces that we can’t imagine that surge in a descent so massive and so inconceivably powerful that the ground of everything before them shakes. And in this descent lives are changed beyond recognition, nations are transformed beyond comprehension, and history is brought to its knees in the face of a God who says “be healed.” That, my friend, is nothing of a delusional soul or imaginary friend or any other such nonsense.”
Craig Lounsbrough
M. Div., LPC