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20 Compelling Thoughts

Dear Friends,

Today I offer you a collection of 20 compelling “thoughts” from many different people! You may agree or disagree – but each is worthy of your consideration. I chose them because I felt they were wise, insightful, helpful, and true! Enjoy.

“Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the godly, for there is no mirth like the mirth of believers.” Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

“If, as the Bible says, “laughter is good medicine’ (Proverbs 17:22), and God has ordained that there be in this world, ‘a time to laugh’ (Ecclesiastes 3:4), then no mind can be thoroughly equipped, and no heart can possess a full complement of virtues, if it is deficient of a sense of humor.”

“If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”
Martin Luther (1483-1546)

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.”
William James (1842-1910)

“Life becomes filled with meaning once it starts to be lived for Jesus.”
Anonymous

“Man has been given two ears and one mouth so that he might listen twice as much as he speaks.”
Walter Colton (1797-1851)

“The first duty of love is to listen.”
Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

“Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable – and most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith rejoices in it’s God.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

“Give me such love for God and man, as will blot out all hatred and bitterness.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

“Self-admiration is the death of the soul. To admire ourselves as we are, is to have no wish to change, and with those who don’t want to change, the soul is dead.”
William Barclay (1907-1978)

“One of the marks of spiritual maturity is quiet confidence that God is in control… without the need to understand why he does what he does.”
Charles Swindoll (1934- )

“The more godly a man is, the more merciful that man will be.”
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)

“Money is like muck, no good except to be spread around.”
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

“Nothing that is God’s is obtainable by money.”
Tertullian (155-220)

“No man is poor who has had a godly mother.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“You can be as straight as a gun-barrel theologically – and just as empty as one spiritually.”
A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

“Every church should be engaged in continuous self-reformation, scrutinizing its traditions in the light of Scripture and where necessary, modifying them.”
John R. W. Stott (1921-2011)

“The best answer to fear is to have a firm grasp of what it means to be accepted by God.”
John Gunstone (1927-2009)

“When I think upon my God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap from my pen; and since God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be pardoned me that I serve Him with a cheerful spirit.” Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Yours in the fellowship of the Gospel, Pastor Jeff

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