When young, the humans are all Imagination because Memory is so much smaller a part of their experience, so little of them is grounded in it. As they grow older, however, Memory overtakes their Imagination,...

Also, always encourage ‘being good’ over ‘doing good.’ Acts of goodness are the difficulty for us and should, of course, be avoided. ‘Being good’ is far less problematic, largely because it lacks definition and can...

Life, liberty and the pursuit of gratitude, now that would’ve worked. They would have been readily led to contentment, which would’ve then better lead them on to happiness.

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer.

freedom of choice,” then eventually we snuff out desire while leaving demand in tact.

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional —the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations.

Now they feel not only known and still loved, but also loved because they are known.

Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right...

It fits my experience of Him.

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the...

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if...

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more...

Finally, slowly, drippingly, degrade the term Choice down to its most meager means: The red car not the black one. The 9:25 showing, not the 7:15. Ritz not Wheat Thins.

When their minds mingle with His magnanimity, something of eternity rubs off on their imaginations.

Selling a new lie is easy, but not so with un-teaching an old truth.

And recently, we installed another word in its place which, to their minds, has a wholly positive connotation. We say ‘Gluttony’. They say ‘Consumerism’.

Faith is where they learn about their God; but Prayer is where they explore Him.

You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be ‘undemocratic’.

They really do occupy a scrumptious little dark corner of my heart!

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop...

If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls...

And once their imaginations are liberated, they begin glimpse the grand interconnectedness of all things. Eternity begins to peek out from behind the everyday things and they see the trappings of any earthly moment as...

The eye is to light as the soul is to God.

Consumerism, the new black. I want my burger my way. Shaken not stirred. Sauce on the side and rare but not rare rare. Venti, two-pump, sugar-free vanilla, non-fat, two Splenda, extra-hot, extra-whip, extra-mocha Mocha and...

They want explanation, not faith; God gives them faith as the explanation.

For example, your man might think: I don’t steal. Maybe on my taxes, everyone does that, but not in the way I heard so and so stole from his company. See? Those men for whose...

I feel unforgivable, but it was out of my control.” Never let them switch those round right or The Adversary will liberate them in a heartbeat, like a bird flying from a cage.

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever.

Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.

All this has been happening around them all the days of their lives though they couldn’t see it, then one day, Prayer removes the veil and everything changes. Think of it this way: Picture a...

Press them continually with memory and dream and have them waste their Present there.

That sense of entitlement is precisely where we want them because the right to happiness is directly opposed to one of The Adversary’s greatest curatives —gratitude.

Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it’s just better form.

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they’ve been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we’re headed right back toward The Virtues.

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...

What-Would-Jesus-Buy”—well now, that could very well revolutionize the Christian church in America.

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they’d have...

So in a man’s mind, he appraises, negotiates, defines, delineates, weighs the information, and that includes God. As you can see, this is a relationship of management, not trust. You don’t trust things you can...

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.

An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas...

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.

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...

When sex was something godlike, Lust was the profane curiosity that killed many a straying cat. Now, having removed mystery, Lust is less a long-standing, overpowering yearning, more a sudden craving of the appetite. Less...

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

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...

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...

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

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.