Uprising by Erwin McManus

This is a catalog of the most insightful quotes I found in Erwin McManus' book Uprising. I hope they are as inspirational to you as they are for me!

Passion
-Suicide is antipathy toward existence; antagonism against the myth of aliveness.
-So many of us have abdicated our passions for obligations, as if passion is a luxury for the young, and we all must grow up one day.
-We, even if reluctantly, fall into place to live a life of conformity that we describe as 'maturity'.  We've made acting like an adult synonymous with living apathetic lives.
-Scriptures place human desires and passions at the epicenter of human action. This is true in both the arena of sin and the arena of holiness.
-The Scriptures teach that God created us in His image and likeness, and part of this reflection of God is a heart designed for passionate living.
-Rather than eliminate our passions, He intends to overwhelm them with new passions.
-The Character of God ignites passion for what is good and true.
       (Passion-->Freedom)
-Our hearts crave the freedom of pleasure and the pleasure of freedom.
-Deeper than our instinct to live is our longing to be alive.
-There is something strangely elusive about freedom. No matter what state we are in, it seems that freedom is to be found somewhere else, in a place or experience that we do not have.
-Your passions can create the exhilaration of freedom while leading you straight into a dark and merciless dungeon.
-You are free to love without limit, to forgive, to be merciful, to be generous, to be compassionate, to risk, to sacrifice, to enjoy, and to live.
***When you make God your primary passion, He transforms all the passions of your heart. The result of this transformation is that it will be God's pleasure to fulfill those passions. Passions become your best compass for your spiritual journey. When God is your desire, you can trust the passions of our heart. It is this state that you can most fully live a uniquely passionate life.***
¿Is it possible that Adam and Eve fell into the same trap that we have (as a culture/society)-a view that freedom is to go and experience that which God has forbidden rather than to fully experience all that God created for our pleasure?
-We are magnetized to a world filled with opportunities and often paralyzed by the inherent responsibilities.
-Opportunity and freedom are not the same thing. Freedom comes from discipline.
-Discipline can be confused with conformity, Many times we run from discipline or at least resist it because we feel we are being forced to conform in the most negative sense of the word.
-The irony is that when we forsake discipline in our attempt to avoid conformity, we lose our potential to be truly free.
-The journey to freedom is paved by the substance of our character.

Foolishness
-If you want to live and die a fool, no one can stop you. Somehow foolishness seeps deep within our bones and works all the way to the core of our being.
-The arrogant man is less himself and more the sum total of everyone else's opinion.
-The more self-oriented we are, the more controlling we are.
-A person God Himself deems as wise is one who not only hears His voice, but immediately begins to act on what he or she has heard.

THE QUEST FOR HONOR
-Unearthing the Warrior's heart.
-The shape of your character is the shape of your future.
Humility
-Violence is arrogance when it doesn't get its way. Losing isn't humbling if you aren't humble already; losing is humiliating.
-When we are most full of ourselves, we are most likely to make fools of ourselves.
-Pride fills up the space where integrity needs to reside.
-Courage is the strength of heart born out of integrity.
-Integrity is formed in the heart of the humble.
-If your personal ambitions are focused on wealth, power, prestige, and pleasure, it's very possible that pride will not get in your way, but in fact guide your way.
-Humility not only draws others to us, but draws God to us.
***God does not oppose the weak, the broken, the poor, the hurting, or even the sinful, but he does oppose the proud.
-Humility doesn't require us to be self-deprecating. Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness.
-Only for the humble is there a promise from God of being exalted. Only to the lowly will God leave a legacy of greatness.
***God is not impressed with talent nearly as much as He is with character. Perhaps no characteristic is more central to the heart of God than humility.
-It's a rare thing to have someone in your life who will tell you the truth.
-Fallen leaders reflect flawed communities. It is far more difficult to look at ourselves and acknowledge that our systems and organizational values may be even more corrupt than the persons we exalted. **Simply because something is religious does not mean that it's spiritually admirable.
-Jesus was comfortable living for thirty years in obscurity earning His wages as the son of a carpenter. Hard work was not beneath God.
-We are called to unload and leave behind everything that is motivated by self-centeredness.
*****If you are still relating to God through negotiations, you have not yet found the path of humility.
-The quest for honor begins with a humility that leaves us empty.
-Submission came before admission and admission was necessary for communion. This is equally true in our relationship with God.
-The real test of submission is when we disagree, when we don't like that God has said because it goes contrary to our personal interests or desires.
-He became living proof that individuals of great power can live under submission.
-To be meek is to have controlled strength.
-Humility gives us the mobility to adapt to whatever context we are placed within. When we are prideful, we become hard-hearted and stiff-necked.
***A bad attitude is evidence of a lack of humility.
-To live a life of courage is not to guarantee of prestige or adulation, but there is a freedom in humility.
-Our poverty has never been His limitation, our position not important for His advantage. Our reputation seems nothing more than incidental.


Integrity
-Integrity is the context from which courage is formed.
-We have put an increasing value on authenticity and a decreasing focus on integrity (authenticity is romanticized).
-Our prisons are filled with men and women who acted on their feelings and impulses.
***Our claim that we are committed to being authentic can actually be a facade for self-indulgence. If we're not careful, authentic can be the new word for arrogance. (as long as you're true to yourself-say what you mean-just get it out-how can anyone fault you in anyway?) This perspective frees us from any concern for the feelings of others.
***Authenticity can establish a self-righteousness that justifies abuse. Authenticity without integrity is lethal.
-To be authentic means literally that we are not false or copied, that we reflect the original, that we are genuine in regard to the intent of the creator.
-The beauty of the work is the reflection of the artist's imagination.
-Rather than the themes of humanity being love, forgiveness, and compassion, our common themes are the very things we would say we despise. We don't have to teach each other to take; it comes naturally. The human heart is skewed towards the self.
-God desires to place within each of us a new heart, a heart that reflects him not only in action, but in desire.
-While religion works to restrain our actions from the outside in, God always works from the inside out.
-Everything God creates is in proper relationship with itself and its environment.
-Only in oneness with God do we find wholeness and integration. He is the source of all that is good.
-Integrity is born out of relationship with God and flows into our relationships with others.
***Integrity is the personification of truth.
*****If we admire someone or aspire to be valued by that individual, a lack of integrity will cause us to conform to what we believe that person wants us to be.
-When we are defined by integrity, we respond with moral courage. Courage is the ultimate expression of integrity.
=INTEGRITY is the personification of TRUTH-->Ultimate expression=COURAGE
-Courage is what integrity looks like when facing the forces of darkness and evil.
-What brings God pleasure brings us pleasure.
-When you fear God, you fear nothing else.
-The fear of God aligns us with all that is true and good and transforms the core motivation of our heart to become love.
**Absolute power does not corrupt; it reveals.
-Corruption is not an issue of power; it's an issue of passion.
-You cannot call someone 'moral' simply because he is restrained from acting on his deepest desires. Otherwise Hannibal Lecter would be considered the ultimate expression of morality simply because he was strapped into a straitjacket.
-Character is the mark that defines who we really are when you get to the core.
-When we lack integrity, we use power to control. When we lead with integrity, we use power to bless.
-Power can either control you or be controlled by you.
-Though David led with "skillful hands," his compass was the integrity of his heart.
-We do no one a favor when we put the abilities over integrity.
-If your ambition is to be great in the sight of men, you are not pursuing greatness in the sight of God.
-The real measure of power is the freedom and opportunity we create for others.
-Leaders of integrity don't simply lead by example; they lead by essence.
-David wasn't just modeling the right thing; the right thing was the longing of his heart.
-It's a wonderful thing wen you look inside your own heart and like what you see.

Courage
-To be courageous is literally to be strong of heart. Both fear and courage are heart conditions.
-Great dreams require great courage.
-We conform to the path of least resistance and abdicate our freedom. So in the end a life without courage is a life without virtue.
-When we submit our lives to what God has made known, the future becomes clearer to us.
**One of our greatest mistakes we make in our spiritual journeys is circumventing the process of accomplishing our God-given dreams by trying to achieve those dreams in a manner that violates God's character.
***Our courage directly affects the speed at which the future unfolds.
-Strangely enough, the eternal work of God is done largely on a human timetable. God would wait for Joshua to step out.
-(Courageous people) Have developed an intuition that allows them to move without hesitation and with the greatest effectiveness.
-Courage is the highest expression of humility. Courage moves us to risk ourselves for the sake of others or a higher cause. Courage allows us to live free from self-preservation and to live generously creative lives.

THE QUEST FOR NOBILITY
-Unleashing the generative spirit
Gratitude
-The solution is not to hide one's talent, but to choose humility. Negligence is not a virtue.
-The goal is not to replace sin with inaction. You overcome selfishness with servant-hood and greed with generosity.
¿I wonder how many of us are neglecting the good we could do to avoid the evil we might do?
-He continuously inspired them to dream great dreams and challenged them to trust God to do unimaginable things through them. 
***God's favorite context for miracles is sacrifice.
-Jesus was having way too much fun for the religious observers who watched him with disdain.
**Sometimes we forget that God created the world for man's pleasure and enjoyment.
-Lack of gratitude is a manifestation of an abundance of greed.
-No truth, no matter how profound, will find its way into a heart that is absent of gratitude.
*****Gratitude is the pathway of love. It unleashes the healing power of love. It increases our capacity to experience love and to give it.
-When we lack wholeness, our ability to perceive the investment of others is damaged. Nothing sticks because our hearts lack the proper texture for the investment to mature.
-The greatest mysteries of life are hidden in simplicity.
-Jesus' standard was how grateful one was for forgiveness.
-Gratitude is the healing ointment for brokenness.
-Gratitude and grace share the same etymology and root meaning. When we properly connect to God, our lives become an endless expression of thanks and praise.
-Forgiveness unlocks gratitude and gratitude unleashes love.
*****Our ability to receive forgiveness is directly related to our willingness to give it.
***A direct benefit of gratitude is the freedom from bitterness.
-In the same way that gratitude is intertwined with forgiveness, brokenness is often perpetuated by bitterness.
***You cannot remain embittered and find wholeness. Bitterness will enslave you.
-When someone desired forgiveness, it is your gift to give out of the generosity of your spirit.
*****An ungrateful heart always sees what's wrong with life.
**If you remain bitter long enough, you will eventually move to despair.
-Gratitude fuels optimism and inspires hope.
**When hope is directed toward the past, it becomes despair.
*****One reason why a person who is embittered ultimately cannot be encouraged into a new frame of thinking it that until he is willing to let go of the past, he is not ready to take hold of the future.
***Our readiness to forgive will draw others to ourselves in that we will be known as a safe place to fail. 
**When we are bitter toward one person, it adversely affects every relationship in our lives. Bitterness clogs the arteries and hardens the heart.
-Bitterness destroys our relationships, impairs our judgment, skews our perspective, and distorts our memories.
-When you trust God with your future, hope naturally abounds.
-Memories have a way of defining not only who you were, but who you are and who you will become. One experience can become pervasive. It can shape your entire view of reality. It can become the filter through which you experience everything in life.
-Gratitude allows us to absorb every possible pleasure from a moment.
-Gratitude doesn't lead to monasticism; it leads to hedonism, not a hedonism absent of holiness, but one that erupts out of wholeness.

Wholeness
-When your heart is sick, it can spread everywhere. Like cancer, despair in the human soul can cause all kinds of malfunctions.
-Certainly if you don't believe something exists, you will not strive for it, unless of course you're crazy.
-There is a phenomenon that when cultures have more of something, they have more words to describe it.
***We have become a culture that diagnoses and medicates our children from a template that reduces antisocial behavior rather than one that nurtures and develops the wholeness they need.
-We are told that the most important thing is to take care of yourself. In this scenario, love is all about consumption.
-When you are broken, there is never enough. Therefore, it is false to believe that once you've taken enough, you'll be satisfied and begin to give to others.
-The search for wholeness is counterintuitive and requires us to let go of what we so long to take hold of and to begin a pilgrimage that leads us to an entirely different path. Wholeness is not found through receiving, but through giving.
-Generosity is not contingent on what you receive, but on what you are willing to give. If we only give what we have received, we are nothing more than relational and emotional barterers. We see everything necessary for human community as a limited resource.
-When a person is whole, he does not see love as a limited resource; he sees love as limitless.
****We have wasted too much effort trying to become perfect in our actions and invested too little energy in becoming healthy in our spirits. 
-This is why ultimately wholeness cannot be defined by our ability to experience love, but our ability to exercise love.
-I also learned that I couldn't buy a person's way out of a self-destructive pattern.
**Modern psychiatry is the totality of the study of human dysfunction. Its expertise is in identifying, describing, and defining expressions of human brokenness. The path to wholeness cannot be discovered by concentrating on the signs of fragmentation.
-In Jesus we unlock the mystery of wholeness. "Not my will, but yours be done." He invites us to find our purpose and our healing in serving others. To properly pursue love, we must strive to give it away rather than simply find it.
-We are so desperate for friendship, so longing for love, that every time someone risks getting close to us, we consume him or her.
-Over the years I've become wary of anyone who begins a conversation by building me up and speaking badly about the last person who invested in his or her life.
-While an unwillingness to love is an outcome of choice when we are emotional consumers, an unexpected consequence is the inability to experience love. Often we are broken, we perceive that we are unloved even when we are surrounded by love.
-As contrary as it may seem, the person who gives away the most of himself will have the greatest experience of love.
-Your emotional health (internal) and your relational health (external) are inseparable.
-When you have a proper relationship with God, you have a healthy sense of yourself.
-When you love God with all your heart, you just have to accept what He says about you--which, by the way, is that you are wonderfully and marvelously made!
***If you pursue loving God and loving others, love with pursue and find you.
-In essence, we are challenged to love on a divine level, to see it it's possible to love too much.
-The more of ourselves that we give away, the more whole we become. The more completely we love, the more complete love makes us.
*****Love requires trust, and trust always requires risk.
-Apart from Him, there grows an all-consuming vacuum in the midst of our souls.

Generosity
-The generous always operate from an abundance mentality.
-Those who give most freely live most fully.
***The apex of generosity is sacrifice=Generosity isn't about how much we give, but rather how much it costs us.
-Greed is fueled by lust. Lust was not an act of Love.
-To want to take is not romantic. To long to give, now that's romantic.  
-God's intention is to move us out of the paralysis of existence and bring us into a life that is productive and meaningful.
-It is easy to feel righteous if you spend your life looking at someone more broken and sinful than you.
***The most difficult falsehoods to correct are the ones that walk closely to truth.
-When your pursuit is for wealth, you leave generosity behind. When you live generously, God pursues you with His riches.
-The attitude of our hearts is to be one of a cheerful giver, not an eager recipient. When we give for future gain, we are simply acting on deferred gratification.
-To choose personal poverty is not always a decision for the greater good. Often it's an abandonment of the full stewardship of your God-given capacity.
-If a person's only goal was to pay his bills, he would be living a nauseating, self-indulgent life.
-God has reminded me that we will be held accountable not just for the gifts we use, but for those we neglect.
-It is true that God brings true contentment regardless of circumstance.
-Good stewards understand everything to be the Lord's and thus are free to give without reservation.


THE QUEST FOR ENLIGHTENMENT
-Unlocking the divine imagination.
Faithfulness
-Godliness is a result of divine activity and human action.
-People just have different capacities to manage different amounts.
-It is both waiting to be unleashed and dependent on your being a faithful steward of what you've been entrusted with.
-When we neglect our God-given capacity, when we refuse to maximize our God-given potential, it is wickedness in the sight of God.
*****Sin is what happens when we have too much time on our hands and too little purpose in our lives.
-To say you don't have any talent is to contradict God.
-Potential and productivity are not the same thing.
-Potential is a glimpse of what could be, yet there must be a shift from where we have potential to where we are potent.
-Those who are most faithful with the most resources will find an expanding role in God's kingdom.
-It's disturbing to think that God would be so disproportionate. Yet this is absolutely true. (Luke 19:25)
-Talent without character is a dangerous thing. Talent fueled by character is a gift from God.
-Character is formed in the crucible of faithfulness and refined through the gauntlet.
-We tend to seek wisdom only when we face an overwhelming crisis.
***We should recognize that it is when we work hard that our talents begin to be harnessed.
-Faithfulness is about making significant those tasks entrusted to you that further the common good.
-Every wise person is marked by the scars of perseverance. Perseverance is the fruit of faithfulness.
-He is also the God who calls you to the greatest level of sacrifice. There are moments when our greatest act of faith is to remain faithful. There will be times where no level of faith will change our circumstance. Faith is not always a way out of crisis.
-The words of God come to those who listen carefully to the voice of God.

Perseverance
***Often we miss the undeniable work of God because we give up too soon.
-It's maddening to think that our efforts might only be failures because we quit too soon. Perseverance is often the only thing that separates failure and success.
-Wisdom is nurtured and formed in the context of trials and temptations.
****Waiting on God requires that we continue to do what is right even when our situation does not change. Patience encompasses a life that follows what God has asked even when it appears that God is not following through on what He has said. Patience holds out for the good.
-Most of us have at least an unspoken expectation that if we do what is right, God will bless us for it.
Romans 5:15 excerpt "And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
-You can be filled with joy even in the midst of suffering when your pursuit is character and not comfort.
**There are few things as exhilarating as going through the fire and finding that you had the resilience to make it through. 
-Trials realign us with reality and position us for divine encounter.
-The evil one also knows that the place of our greatest vulnerability is the vacuum created between our need and God's provision.
***We keep trying to find a way to meet the deepest longings of our soul apart from the God who intimately created us.
*****It is especially hard to wait when you're so afraid it may never happen, and so easy to convince yourself that you have to take things into your own hands.
-To separate the created thing from the source of its creator is to demean the gift.
-Creation is here to draw us back to God.

Wisdom
***For one thing just going through something doesn't ensure that you will gain wisdom from the experience.
-If we can only learn when we go through it, then we have essentially invalidated learning form anyone else's experience.
-It should be obvious that those who live enlightened lives have demonstrated a unique ability to learn from everyone and everything around them.
-When you are your own reference point, you destine yourself to an endless cycle of foolishness.
*****IF you are determined to only learn the hard way, you will find it hard to learn. In the end you will find yourself falling hard. You can have a wealth of experience and die wisdom poor.
***Experience is no guarantee of enlightenment.
-Wisdom doesn't come by simply traveling. You have to pursue it.
-It's not simply when you experience something, but when you extract it from your experience.
-Wisdom unleashes our capacity to create the good. Wisdom not only sees the good that must be done now, but catalyzes such events that result in a good future.
-Wisdom always produces a rich and honorable life.
-I've found that very few people who were selected as examples of wisdom were actually very rich.
-The ultimate results of wisdom are health, freedom and creativity. An essential component of wisdom is the ability to get to the core. Wisdom always finds a way through the mess we make of life. It doesn't find the easiest way, but the way marked by the footprints of God. Wisdom knows that ancient paths will lead us into a divine future. Wisdom is the product of a sacred imagination.
**Solomon's ability to administer justice was contingent on his ability to discern human motivation. He created a scenario where the good and the evil of the human heart would rise to the surface. (1 kings 3)
-If you don't know why you did it, you will not be able to change your motivation.
-Wisdom not only allows you to move beyond living a senseless life; it helps you begin to make sense of life.
-While a fool strives to bring attention to himself, wisdom brings others to attention.
-Urban youth; There seemed to be an unwillingness or and inability to connect the dots. I was convinced that if they could see the relationship between cause and effect, they would be free of so much unnecessary pain in their lives.
-Something as simple as a proper view of cause and effect not only grows us in wisdom, but brings greater freedom to our lives.
*****It is funny how we describe endless self-indulgence as "freedom". The truth of the matter is that very quickly our pleasures become indulgences and our indulgences become addictions. The final analysis reveals that our sin reduces us to living as slaves to addictive patterns, destructive habits, and unfulfilling ruts.
-Without God in the end, we all find ourselves looking the same. In God we see the endless possibilities for good.
***Wisdom recognizes that while some opportunities are captivating, beneath the surface they are ready to take you captive.
-When facing the unknown, we have a heightened sense of instability.
*****SIGNS/ZODIAC/FORTUNES For some reason many of us would rather know the future than create it. After all, if someone can simply tell us the future, we can abdicate any responsibility on our parts.
***While many look at trends to evaluate the course of culture, I am convinced it is far more profitable to examine cultural values. When you understand what a person cares about, you get a better sense of his or her internal compass and direction.
-The future is the sum total of all the choices that are made in the present and in the past.
***The choices you and I make directly affect the conditions of others. In fact, our demand for freedom may actually result in tyranny over others.
-Wisdom sees all life through relationships.
-Philosophy is literally the love of wisdom. I can assure you that there is little of wisdom's original essence left in the discipline.
-The epicenter of all Wisdom is God Himself.
-What you fear is what you are subject to. Your fears define the boundaries of your lives.
-You know God as not only a God of holiness, but also a God of infinite compassion.

Great Oswald Chambers quotes

But before we choose to follow God’s will, a crisis must develop in our lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God’s gentler nudges. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate. He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide— for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably.

If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. This shows no unity with God or confidence in Him. The spirit of simplicity, clarity, and unity is born through the Holy Spirit, not through your decisions. God counters our self-willed decisions with an appeal for simplicity and unity.

The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others.

“. . . but perfect love casts out fear . . .” once we are surrendered to God (1 John 4:18). We should quit asking ourselves, “Am I of any use?” and accept the truth that we really are not of much use to Him. The issue is never of being of use, but of being of value to God Himself. Once we are totally surrendered to God, He will work through us all the time.

The Shack

I know I said I was going to write about CS Lewis in this blog but I just read The Shack and encountered a great deal of opposition. I'm just going to write out the quotes, with full context, that represent the major ideas and themes presented in the book. This is going to be raw but if you're curious about the book this will give you a good idea.

5.68 "There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn't mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that makes sense only if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in."

6.95 "Mack, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or woman, it's because I lov you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me 'Papa' is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning."


6.102-103 "Only as Jesus rested in his relationship with me, and in our communion, our co-union, could he express my heart and will into any given cifcumstance. That's how every human is designed to live-out of my life.We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father and worker. I am one God and I am three persons, and each of the three is fully and entrely the one. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exists with me, with God myself."


7.114 "It is quite simple really. Being alwas transcends appearance, that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surfaceappearances fade away until they simply no longer matter."


8.126 "As the crowning glory of creation you were made in our image unencumbered by structure and freee to simply be in relationship with me and one another. If you had truly learned to regard on another's concerns as significant as your own, ther would be no need for hierarchy."

9.135 "That is the wonder and adventure of exploration, a piece of what you call science, to discern and discover what we have hidden for you to find. Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life."

9.137 " Then it is you who determines good and evil. You become the judge. And to make things more confusing, that which you determine to be good will change over time and circumstance. And then, beyond that and even worse, there are billions of you, each ddetermining what is good and what is evil. So when your good and evil clash with your neighbor's, fights ensue and even wars break out. And if there is no reality of good that is absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for evil."

10.144 "It is your desparate attempt to get some control over something you can't. It is impossible for you to take power over the future becase it isn't even real, nor will it ever be real. You try to play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try to make plans and contingenies to avoid what you fear."

12.184 'Those who love me have come from every system that exists. They were buddhists or mormons, baptists or muslims, some are democrats, some republicans and many don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraquis, jews and palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to joing them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my bros and sisters, into my beloved. “‘Does that mean’, asked Mack, ‘that all roads will lead to you?’ ‘Not at all’, smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. ‘Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you."

14.197 "You can always talk to me and I will always be with you, whether you sense my presence or not. You will learn to hear my thoughtsin yours." _Holy spirit

14.199 "Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception, what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms, what ou believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. The more you live in truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly. But even then, you don't want to trust them more than me.

14.200 "Of course yo migght see me in a piece of art, or music or silence or through people or in creation or in your joy and sorrow. My abilit o communicate is limitless, living and transforming, and it will always be turned to papa's goodness and love."

14.205 "Those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the Law is atually a declartion of independence, a way of keeping control. The law grants ou the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. It's a vague attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty."

17.237 "If anything matters then everything matters. because you are important, everything you do is important.  Every time you forgive, the universe changes, every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes, with every kindness and service seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same."