"We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists."

"At some point I hope to have grown sufficiently in both stature and wisdom to understand that I cannot deliver myself from myself, and that God alone can save me from me."

"Christmas seems to say that paradise lost and longed for does not have to be paradise given up on."

"If sacrifice is not the theme of my life, there's no sense telling the story."

"We are quick to surrender that which we deem as long dead, when God is quick to restore that which He deems as never really having lived."

"If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do."

"It would be wise to define 'living' as walking in the fullest expression of who I am, verses wallowing in the confines of who I'm not."

"Worlds of my own creation are erected with walls that are within but a few scant paces of each other. The world that God creates for me has no idea what walls are."

"The hallmark of great dreams is not their possibility but their impossibility, and the fact that it is the very notion of the 'impossible' that inspires us to go and accomplish them anyway."

"There's something of a restorative quality about spring, where something whispers wild rumors of new beginnings arising from the seemingly dead seeds in our lives. There's something almost cruel about it all, as if there might be some sort of truth about a new life actually being possible. Yet, maybe it is true."

"I spend a tremendous amount of time carefully choosing the roles I wish to play so that I can run from the role I was born to play. And if I keep on doing that, I will eventually set foot in my grave never having set foot on the stage."

"Most journeys are armchair calculations strategically charted in some reclined state that are designed to allow us to embark upon a grand journey without ever leaving the armchair. However, real journeys are absent of furniture."

"Fear is a lethal killer of dreams, the greatest cancer that has beset passion, and a ruthless thief of lives stolen and buried in the decay of lives squandered. Yet the greatest tragedy of all is that the fear that destroys us is rarely the monster it pretends to be, nor does it possess anything close to the power that we grant it. Therefore, it is only a killer, a cancer and a thief because we empower it to be so."

"It is, I think, a far lesser offense to blatantly ignore God's directions for our lives rather than arrogantly think ourselves shrewd enough to be able to bend them to our liking without breaking them and therefore breaking ourselves."

"The voice incessantly quelled in the chorus of human voices will always be the voice of God. And given a reality of this magnitude, I would be well advised to cease my babbling and encourage those around me to do the same."

"I would entertain the apparently fading idea that patriotism that serves the self is greed dressed in the garments of liberty and adorned with the fashion accessories of other associated patriotic notions."

"Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds."

"Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them."

"The point that I think myself to be so terribly clever is the precise point at which I am beginning to think myself to be god-like, which causes me to become God-less."

"Pain dutifully reminds me that the world is terribly imperfect, but it faithfully helps me appreciate the world on those days when it's a little closer to being perfect."

"And who would dare write their own death into the script so that the rest of the characters in the tale might live? God of course."

"My rather arrogant attitude deludes me into believing that my ability to understand something is the criteria for its legitimacy. And if there's one thing in my life that I don't understand yet I allow to be legitimate, thinking this way would most certainly be it."

"I would be quite wise to realize that I will never craft a solution that will be the 'end-all,' and that God's ability to craft perfect solutions never ends 'at-all."

"It is the fool who declares 'I am ascending the summit,' while he's toddling around in the ditch."

"An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I've made, not the elimination of it."

"It is not the chains of some tyrant that robs us of freedom. Rather, it is the staleness of our attitude."

"One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God."

"My fear of endings too often blocks my hope of beginnings."

"The road to success is paved with the hot asphalt of failure."

"If your dream doesn't scare you, it's not big enough."

"It is the length of the journey that ripens the joy of the outcome."

"Such is the power of truth that even the slightest whisper of it can handily drown out the most boisterous of lies, which may explain why in many instances God only needs to whisper."

"The fear of getting knocked down is less about the pain of the fall and more about the embarrassment in having fallen. And so, to rid myself of the latter is to reduce my concern about the former, which means I just unleashed my life."

"I incessantly look for water in wells dug by men, and I have drunk enough sand to prove it."

"If I don't know who I am apart from everyone else, I probably need to spend some time apart from everyone else."

"Our best-laid plans are often our worst-made decisions."

"Despite the voices of the culture that would scream otherwise, victory is irreparably tied to the surrender of self. And that explains why so few are truly victorious."

"If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk."

"Consequences need not be the obstacles that I dread, but the direction that I need."

"Failure is blessing wrapped in the clothing of curse."

"If I am brave enough to stand against those who have been groomed by fear, I will recognize that where I get knocked down is all about where life begins, and has nothing to do with where it ends."

"I want to stand on the truth that God has designed us to stand, and that the opportunity to stand is the opportunity to live exuberantly and gloriously."

"When we choose to stay down, we are in reality confusing wisdom with cowardice. When we choose to stand back up, we are using wisdom to overcome cowardice."

"Despite opinions to the contrary, restoring Godly values is the most progressive course of action that we could ever hope to take."

"We will understand the depth of our vision when at some point we are finally faced with the price we must pay to achieve it. And when the price comes calling, most visions end up falling."

"When standing face to face with myself, I far too often refuse to look in the mirror. When standing face to face with God, there is no place where a mirror is not."

"To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed."

"Dreams must be chased, for if we wait for them to chase us we will live a life of waiting."

"Human beings manifesting the fullness of who they were created to be would be inviting and correspondingly transformational in a manner almost mysterious."

"I can only see life as this most miserable accident that I have been forced to endure simply because I refuse to see it as the most astounding plan that I have been privileged to engage."