There is a mathematics to all his relationships, underlying each and every one. He wants it to all add up in his head and he wants to do the adding. And should someone step outside his ciphers, the circle his mind has drawn, his trust evaporates.

If I didn’t think of it, it has no bearing on my life.

Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten.

If God’s suggesting that I am expected to do good and also obligated to manufacture a genuine desire for it, this boat’s sunk, still sitting on the trailer in the driveway. A stack of things need to happen before I desire to be good…

I don’t want God’s forgiveness. And He’s not getting mine.~Harry Silver

She feared God may not deliver her out of this mess, especially if He had a greater plan.

When you get the coffee from the store, does it come in a great big metal can?’He beamed. ‘Absolutely.’That was all I needed to hear. “Tea. A cup of tea.

Loving someone wasn’t about their perfection. It was about coming to accept every part of them, their good qualities at their weaknesses and flaws–looking on everything they were and loving it all.As she looked on everything Jake was, right down to his center, she loved him.

The Bible is the one book we’ve most succeeded in having them never read as a book. Keep it that way.

We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.

Where faith costs nothing, faith loses respect, even to those who possess it.

Quote from my book DIVINE INTERRUPTIONS: A BIBLE STUDY THROUGH THE BOOK OF JOB. Available on Amazon.”LIFE lessons are so challenging!God never promised us an easy life, but it’s not all darkness and suffering. We have a choice to see things with a positive mind set. Recognizing the negativity in our thinking is the first...

It was William who would climb out of his carriage unafraid and help a farmer drive a herd of cattle or sheep across a road when necessary.

Lovemaking is more than sex, it’s a connecting of hearts, meeting of minds, & touching of souls.” ~ Dr. Scott Hensley

With addiction, a client’s fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself.

Faith is an act whereby they learn their God.

Are You still there?” and suddenly all was made well between them.

illusion” of choice because, in many cases, the nature of their choices hardly reaches the level of will, but of merely perfunctory activity. For the most part, their desires are not too strong, they are too weak, apathetic and easily placated. They often can be tempted into doing Nothing.

Why couldn’t she have given him a sultry laugh as she’d seen women do in movies instead of giggling like some enchanted, mindless school girl?

Now, along with the guns I’d retrieved from my personal storage unit, I felt totally prepared to write a scholarly book on the Middle East.–Titus Ray, Chapter 9

Pride had a very similar character with Lust. He was difficult to satisfy, but rather than desiring tasty foods, Pride desired valuable possessions. Man clung to Pride more than the other two because he was the firstborn son. Pride had a very sensitive sense of touch and an attention-grabbing voice. Even when Pride was not...

At the same time, they find their mind-god has played a trick on them. For mind is a part of the very system it has closed around it, and being inside, there is no reason to think any statement made by some part concerning the whole has any validity. Mind was caused by the material...

Once a man discovers that his obedience is primarily for others’ sake, that every miracle that ever amazed happened because of someone’s obedience somewhere, that properly understood, his obedience prepares the way for His visitation, well, then we run up against the appalling result of attentive servants gladly going about His bidding without the slightest...

happiness” for themselves. They can’t and that’s precisely what we never want them to realize. Keep it a vague bright mist hovering about their heads. Locate it securely at the end of implausible rainbows. Hide it snugly in some corner of their thoughts they rarely visit.

Trust is crazy. You are a risky, risky, God. I didn’t sign up to be Amazing Trust Boy, and I did not sign up for Danger God. You’re flatly not safe…

To whom much is given, much is required.

People were never meant to be idols. We aren’t supposed to be worshipped. Only God deserves that kind of praise.

I’m sixteen with what I hope will be a long life ahead, but I’m willing to give it up, to give anything to let her live, to let her make it through the night.

He’d sacrifice even his sanity for her. If it came down to it, he’d let her break his heart.Because he loved her.

Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself.

They think that if they were allowed to do anything they desired, they would be satisfied and the more desires the better. But all desires divorced from The Desire eventually collapse in on themselves.

But as I say, if you look to the state of their souls you’ll find the situation nowhere near as grave as polls suggest. There’s more to being a servant of The Adversary than signing up.

Dear Lord,” she prayed, “please help me to handle all the work You’ve set before me. I can only do this with You at my side. Amen.

When we decided to move West, I worried about how to defend my family and my stock from Indians, but I never worried about inheriting one!”–from Prairie Grace when Georgia’s father Thomas realizes gravely ill Gray Wolf has been left at their doorstep

My disadvantages will tire him as they would any reasonable man of small expectations.” – Jane Adams

That’s where thinking started, where thinking stopped, where all her prayers so long ago had dried up. She no longer prayed, nor even dreamed of changing her father. Her dreams now played variations on the theme of escape. And they were nothing more than that —just dreams, just play. She’d been alone at the end...

The more we train a man to labor, deliberate, dictate and demand over the inconsequential, the less capable his mind becomes of holding that of consequence.

It seems The Adversary needs neither their guilt nor their request, but simply their return. In other words, since repentance is the process whereby guilt is turned into gratitude, He doesn’t mind if they skip a step and go directly to gratitude.

But here I’d like to add to what the Tempter’s Manual suggests. Depression, at its finest, is not a Future that they cannot hopefully construct, nor a shamed Past that hounds them, but an agonizing Present that they cannot escape. We want to disable their Present so that they cannot use it to look Heavenward.

You’re not so tough. No tougher than the man whose blood will spill from your veins.

I’ve never minded finding out what others thought I didn’t know. Titus Ray, Chapter 3

Sin said, “Lust was never satisfied. She was the largest of the three, and had the loudest, most unforgiving cry. When I tried to give her breast milk, Lust wanted more food in addition, so I began to supplement my breast milk.

They think that if they had more belief they would pray more, so keep them lacking. Never let them realize that the opposite is true: If they prayed more, they would have more belief.

Grace runs downhill and now all his time is being redeemed.

The Americans’ great wealth (and their great love for it) makes it precisely the appropriate metaphor. Supply and Demand as a principle has permeated their minds. As a practice, it stains all the way down to their souls.

Your suffering only matters if it connects you to the suffering of others, if it heals them too.

Is it possible to love someone so completely, so intensely, they could never die? To give them more than just your heart or your soul? What if you could give then the miracle of immortality?

You have to leave room for God’s grace. Perfect is God’s job.

I’ve got a lot of homework to do, and none of it has anything to do with school.

He wanted desperately to stay, just a little while longer. But he couldn’t be here, in this place, with her. It was calm here. She was innocent and beautiful and perfect. He was not. He didn’t want his mess or his mental illness or his past anywhere near her. He wanted to protect her from...