I appreciate that many of you have told me you really like the quotes I used as introductions to each chapter in my new book Peace in the Face of Cancer. I spent many, many hours researching fitting quotes and trying to find firsthand sources to confirm their attributions. But there were many more quotes which didn’t make it past the “cutting room floor.” The above title quote from an unknown source is one of the ones I really liked, but didn’t end up using 🙂
So I thought I would share some of these quotes as encouraging today words to the weary. I hope at least one or two lifts your spirits, builds your faith or causes you to ponder your relationship with God. (FYI I’ve verified them to some extent, but not with as much scrutiny as I would if I were putting them in a book!)
“Don’t pursue trials, but don’t flee from them in a panic either.”—Chris Tiegreen, One Year Walk with God Devotional
“The absence of fear is not courage; the absence of fear is some kind of brain damage.”—M. Scott Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled
“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” Martin Luther King Jr. in his sermon “Antidotes to Fear”
“Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”—Corrie ten Boom, Dutch Christian holocust survivor
“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”—Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” speech
“All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
“Thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”—St. Augustine, Confessions
“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”—Corrie ten Boom
“Don’t waste your cancer.”—John Piper, pastor, written on the eve of his prostate cancer surgery
“If God be our God, He will give us peace in trouble. When there is a storm without, He will make peace within. The world can create trouble in peace, but God can create peace in trouble.”—Thomas Watson, Puritan noncomformist teacher and author
“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.”—Robert Murray McCheyne, pastor, Church of Scotland, died at age 30
“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”—C.S. Lewis
“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.” C.S. Lewis
“(God) doesn’t say, ‘Into each life a little rain must fall,’ then aim a hose in earth’s general direction and see who gets the wettest. He doesn’t reach for a key, wind up nature with its sunny days and hurricanes, then sit back and watch the show. He doesn’t let Satan prowl about totally unrestricted. He doesn’t believe in a hands-off policy of governing. He’s not our planet’s absent landlord. Rather, He screens the trials that come to each of us—allowing only those that accomplish His good plan, because He takes no joy in human agony.”—Steve Estes, When God Weeps
“Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than we leave behind.”—C.S. Lewis
Missionary Jim Elliot prior to his martyrdom at age 28 by the Waodani tribe, whom he had befriended and attempted to share the gospel: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Amen.
I hope you will enjoy today’s song with actual video footage from the life of Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries murdered in 1956. His widow Elisabeth went back to the village and shared Christ with the Waodani–many of whom became Christ-followers. You can read this marvelous redemption and forgiveness story in her book “Through Gates of Splendor.” (The video also shows some of Olympian runner Eric Liddell–“Chariots of Fire”–who refused to run on Sunday. )
(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy and paste this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fkeXbti90Y )
