“An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run” –Sydney J. Harris

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” –Thomas a Kempis

“We must stop setting our sights by the light of each passing ship; instead we must set our course by the stars.” –George Marshall

“This is the great conversion in life: to recognize

“We dishonor God if we proclaim a Savior who satisfies and then go around discontent” –J.I. Packer

“Contentment is pursuing God’s daily agenda even it if means walking directly into the storm” –Richard Swenson

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has” –Epictetus

“The virtue of contentment is the acquiescence of the mind in the lot God has given” –William Ames

“Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal

“There is little we touch, but we leave the print of our fingers behind” –Richard Baxter

“Influence is not twisting people’s arms to get them to do things.  It is not pleading with them to do things.  You don’t turn influence on and off like a light switch.  Influence is a mindset.  Influence is a cumulative pressure that gets thing moving and keeps them moving.” –Mel Lawrenz

“You don’t have to be a house-hold name to change the house.  You don’t have to have your name out on the marquee to change the marquee.  Small people doing small …

“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; but they are the instruments of the wise” –Samuel Lover

“Some treat adversity as a stepping stone, others a tombstone” –John Maxwell

“The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes from when we suffer without learning the lesson” –Emmett Fox

“You and I obviously do not seek out adversity just so we can develop a deeper relationship with God. Rather God, through adversity, seeks us out. It is God who draws us more and more into a deeper relationship with Him. If we are seeking Him, it is because

“The church of our day has soft-pedaled the doctrine of obedience, either neglecting it altogether or mentioning it only unapologetically and without urgency” –A.W. Tozer

“It’s the quiet life of obedience that will earn a hearing” –Steve Farrar

“As prayer without faith is but a beating of the air, so trust without prayer is but a presumptuous bravado. He that promises to give, and bids us trust his promises, commands us to pray, and expects obedience to his commands.  He will give, but not without our asking” –Thomas Lye

“One of the banes of present-day evangelical Christianity