“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!”

“The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they've never failed to imitate them.”

“If you really are smarter than others, show them with your actions.”

“This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality. Never forget that life is not about you! You exist for God’s purposes, not vice versa. Why would God provide heaven on earth when he’s planned the real thing for you in eternity? God gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven.

“Romans 8:1 says that, as believers, we can “live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.” One of the ways you can tell if you are following the flesh (your own plan) instead of the Spirit (God’s plan) is that you have no peace and you’re struggling.”

“Escapism seems to be the order of the day . . .Escape with drugs or alcohol, and the bitterness of living will be blurred . . .We can’t escape from God.”

“The iron may not be hot early if you want to wait for it to get heated; it will get hot if you strike it hardly! Strike it now!”

“Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night —little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape wil be quite hidden in the end.”

“A seminary professor I once knew told his students, “Never preach about hell without tears in your eyes.”

“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

“Yes! If you really love your beautiful garden of dreams, you will never allow any hungry beast to have its way in. Keep dream killers away!”

“When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.”

“They haven’t an idea what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all”