Self-Pity

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it,
we can never do anything wise in this world.

- Helen Keller

Always in the Presence of God

We are always in the presence of God. There is never a nonsacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of His presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes.
...

- Max Lucado

Advice for the Discontented

You are where you are right now because God wants you there. You may be happy about your current circumstances or you may be miserable. Most likely you are somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter. You are where you are at this moment because God wants you there. How do I know that? Because if God wanted you somewhere else, you’d be somewhere [else], and when he does want you somewhere else, that’s where you will be. If God is God, that must be true.

- Ray Pritchard

The next time you feel like God can’t use you, just remember...

Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Isaac was a daydreamer
Jacob was a liar
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
David had an affair and was a murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Isaiah preached naked
Jonah ran from God
Naomi was a widow
Job went bankrupt
John the Baptist ate bugs
Peter denied Christ
The Disciples fell asleep while praying
Martha worried about everything
The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once
Zaccheus was too small
Paul was too religious
Timothy had an ulcer… and
Lazarus was dead!

No more excuses now. God can use you to your full potential. Besides you aren’t the message, you are just the messenger. - anonymous

The power of the Church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The Church is not made up of the whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us. - Mike Yaconelli

The grace of God is the mending glue for broken hearts. - unknown

God sees with utter clarity who we are. He is undeceived as to our warts and wickedness. But when God looks at us that is not all He sees. He also sees who we are intended to be, who we will one day become. - John Ortberg

True Self-Worth

No one can make you inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt

We must not be unjust and require from ourselves what is not in ourselves. Do not desire not to be what you are, but desire to be very well what you are. - François de Sales

No amount of self-improvement can make up for a lack of self-acceptance. - Robert Holden

We cannot consistently live in a manner that is inconsistent with the way we see ourselves. - John C. Maxwell

The butterfly often forgets it was a caterpillar. - Swedish proverb

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
- Samuel Johnson

Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. - Sam Walton

When people are made to feel secure and important and appreciated, it will no longer be necessary for them to whittle down others in order to seem bigger in comparison. - Virginia Arcastle

If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you. - Coach Bear Bryant

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. - Edmund Burke

If you like yourself, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. - Janet Evans
[And,… if you don’t like yourself, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.]

We get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position. - A.W. Tozer

Finding Your Identity in Christ

I am a single adult on an intense journey toward wholeness,
trying to make sense of a wonderful reality,
a tenderly outrageous gift called Grace,
modeled by a Galilean single adult who said,
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
- Harold Ivan Smith

What makes us special is the signature of God on our lives. - Max Lucado

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. [They are all immortal.] - C.S. Lewis

God created everybody for a purpose. You were not born for the purpose of being married. To me, that’s an incident along the way that happens. There’s a deeper purpose for your being on this planet. And therefore you must discover the dream God put in your heart. Why did God give you life? There’s something He wants done on this earth that requires your life. So you were born, not to be a husband or a wife primarily, but to accomplish something God wants you to accomplish. - Dr. Myles Munroe

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. - G. K. Chesterton

I am not who you think I am.
I am not who I think I am.
I am who God says I am and I can be, do, and have all that God has promised me—his favored child. - David Foster

What I felt most was a glob of unworthiness that I could not tie down to any concrete sin I was guilty of. What I needed more than pardon was a sense that God accepted me, owned me, held me, affirmed me, and would never let go of me even if He was not too much impressed with what he had on his hands. - Lewis Smedes

All we want in Christ, we shall find in Christ. If we want little, we shall find little. If we want much, we shall find much; but if, in utter helplessness, we cast our all on Christ, He will be to us the whole treasury of God. - Henry Benjamin Whipple

What the Bible Says about Your Identity

You are precious and honored in my sight, and… I love you.
- Isaiah 43:4

You are not your own; you were bought at a price.
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.
- Deuteronomy 8:17-18

A Relationally-Attractive You

In order to live victoriously as singles, we must get to the place where we live contentedly, without expecting our circumstances to change. It is in living for today, as the day presents itself, that we become healthy, whole individuals… Remember it doesn’t take halves to make a couple; it takes two whole people coming together to become a tribute to oneness.

- Michelle McKinney Hammond

Why Not the Best?

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best.

God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

- George MacDonald

No Good Thing Will He Withhold

"For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly." (Psalm 84:11)

This verse has long been a comfort to me, especially at times when God withheld what I thought was best for my life. Reading and mediating on this verse helped me to realize that if what I had thought was best really was best, God would have indeed have allowed me to have it or keep it. The fact that He withheld just what I'd wanted helped me to accept that it was not His best for me.

It is a comfort to know that, not only will God give us His best, but He will withhold and protect us from that which is not His best. Sometimes this is before we are very attached to this not-so-good thing, but other times we have to do a lot of grieving as God pries it out of our hands. It's only much later that we realize how much He has saved us from.

There is a clause in this verse that indicates that God only does this for certain people: those who walk uprightly. There's another verse that says, "The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him" (II Chronicles 16:9). This doesn't mean that we have to be perfect, but it does mean that God is anxious to work on behalf of those whose heart is turned fully towards Him, and who desire to be fully obedient no matter the cost.

Copyright (c) 2001 Fern Horst

For more of Fern's articles, go to:
Purposeful Singleness

What will make you happy?

When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy.

- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain