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...

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?

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.

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...

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,...

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...

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.

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...

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

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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.

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...

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?

Shameful! It is downright shameful that so-called men of God would use religion to manipulate people.”–from Prairie Grace when Thomas learns how the Indian agents and others are stealing from Native Americans

I am a firm believer that the challenges we endure in life evolve us to be the peole we become. I have learned that life is what you make of it, what you do is...

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...

In Joy, to lose one’s life is to gain it, and Joy never loses an opportunity to be lost in the other.

They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.

And I’m glad to see that all three clients are male. Not that the females can’t be corrupted, I’ve just always found the males more amenable to temptation. The males have always had all the...

Facing our fears, skeletons, and mistakes is paramount in finding ourselves-in living with ourselves. Once it’s done, that fear will be laid to rest, and she’ll be stronger for having dealt with it and have...

There’s something to be said for silence. –Titus Ray, Chapter 25

Sin says, “Do you have a relationship with God, the gods, or a emulate something in the fashion of a god (nature, science, etc.? I use religion as a pacifier to make people think that...

I shouldn’t need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis...

Truth, with a capital T, was swapped for Fact with a capital F, then both lower-cased —facts the new trues.

That dusty hill we can scarcely look upon and then only with pain, The Adversary, also with pain, does and must ever witness The Crucifixion.

They scold their own hearts but it actuates no real change, only deepens the wound. But they can’t look away from it. Thus, by paralyzing their Present, we beat The Adversary on His home turf....

Terry recalled far better days when she’d risen bright and early every morning…. Days before darkness had closed in and refused to leave….

I believe that all things happen under the watchful eye of God and the lessons we learn along the way only serve to make us stronger.

Still, despite all our noise, this universe hinges on a melody, that’s the dismal truth of it. Oh, we can propagandize all we wish, it doesn’t change the fabric of things. This universe was not...

Gratitude, not guilt, as motivation is always His starting point, thus guilt as a motivation leads nowhere.

The Americans want a surplus stocked up to supply their every whim. And their appeals are much less requests, more demands. Indeed, the phrase might be more aptly put: Demand and Surplus.

Trust becomes the only road home, back to love.

We had given in to our vulnerability and cast down any pretenses that we were too strong to be weak.