A Few Oswald Chambers Quotes

"Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time."
Oswald Chambers

"Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man."
Oswald Chambers


"It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual."
Oswald Chambers

"The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ."
Oswald Chambers


"We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties."
Oswald Chambers

"We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us."
Oswald Chambers

"When a man is at his wits' end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality."
Oswald Chambers

"When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, "I can't.""
Oswald Chambers

"You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside."
Oswald Chambers

"Your Mind Matters" by: John Stott

This book is really short - 61 pages. It is a transcript of a talk Stott gave to his students at the beginning of an acedemic year. I think it's a nice read. This book is much more consice than "Love Your God with all Your Mind" by Moreland, but discusses the same sorts of ideas.
He begins talking about how it's important to have zeal and knowledge. That one without the other is a problem. He's also against cold pragmatism: "The modern world breeds pragmatists whose first question about anything is not, "Is it true?" but "Does it work?""
Stott asks the question, why should Christians develop and use their minds? He gives answers such as,
- The ideas around us are potentially dangerous and false(i.e. think about "Mein Kampf" in the days of Hitler); and most certainly against the gospel.
- We're created to think
- God is a self-revealing God, who has thoughts to share with us
- We have a new redeemed mind, given to us by Christ
- We can use our minds to worship God, present the gospel to others, and utilize our gifts in the Body
Furthermore, Stott discusses having a reasonable faith. He shows how our minds can help guide us towards the Lord and spiritual growth. He ends suggesting that we depend on the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean we don't use our own minds as well. He brings up what God spoke to Daniel after Daniel had prayed: "Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard..." Stott concludes, "Indeed, both the setting of the mind to understand and the self-humbling before God are tokens of a man's hunger for divine truth."

movies and books

this is the list of movies and books from the book entitled, "What Stories Does My Son Need? A Guide to Books and Movies that Build Character in Boys" by: Michael Gurian
I love a lot of these - although i might add a few more personally. which would you add?

Stories and movies:
Movies=
Empire of the sun
Et
Field of dreams
Forrest gump
Free willy
Gallipoli
Gandhi
Glory
Gods must be crazy
Goodwill hunting
Grapes of wrath
Hamlet
High noon
Hoosiers
In and out
Inside moves
Iron giant
Iron will
It’s a wonderful life
Judgment at Nuremberg
Karate kid
Kramer vs. Kramer
Lassie come home
Life is beautiful
Lion king
Lucas
Man for all seasons
Mask
Matrix
Men don’t leave
Miracle on 34th street
Mississippi burning
Mr. holland’s opus
Mulan
My bodyguard
Never cry wolf
October sky
Old yeller
Paths of glory
Peter pan
Pinnochio
Places in the heart
Pride of the Yankees
Prince of Egypt
Prince of tides
Princess bride
Rocky
Rudy
Saving private ryan
Scent of a woman
Schindler’s list
Scrooged
Searching for bobby fischer
Shane
Shawshank redemption
Silverado
Simon birch
Simple plan
Sound of music
Stand by me
Swiss family robinson
Sword in the stone
ten commandments
Three wishes
To kill a mockingbird
Treasure island
Unforgiven
Vision quest
Wargames
Where the red fern grows
White squall
Willow
Books
Wind in the willows
Little prince
Lou gehrig: the luckiest man
Like jake and me
Aesop’s fables
Complete grimm’s fairy tales
Firestorm at kookaburra station
Minstrel in the tower
Mint cookie miracles
Stories Julian tells
Stuart little
When dinosaurs die
Wingman
Black beauty
Bridge to taribithia
Charlotte’s web
Chronicle’s on Narnia
Curse of the blue figurine
Defeat of the ghost riders
Gathering of days
Indian in the cupboard
Island of the blue dolphins
Phantom tollbooth
See behind trees
Stuck in neutral
Whipping boy
Animal farm
Bless the beasts and the children
Call of the wild
Dr. Jekyll and mr. hyde
Education of little tree
Grapes of wrath
Harry potter
Hatchet
Hobbit
If rock and roll were a machine
Johnny tremain
Jonathon Livingston seagull
Kim
Lord of the flies
Master puppeteer
Moves make the man
Nothing but the truth
Old man and the sea
Ordinary genius: the story of albert Einstein
Pearl
Red pony
Robinson crusoe
Running loose
Jungle
Stotan!
Tuesdays with morrie
Things fall apart
Staying fat for sarah byrnes
Stevie
Shiloh
Separate peace
Walt Whitman
William and the good old days
Wizard of earthsea

Faith, Hope, and Love by C.S. Lewis

I wanted to share a few things that I read today about faith, hope, and love.

Faith =
"The question of faith arises after a man has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's own. In other words, he discovers his bankruptcy. Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What He cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind of quality - the kind of creatures He intended us to be - creatures related to Himself in a certain way. I do not add "and related to one another in a certain way" because that is included: if you are right with Him, you will inevitably be right with your fellow creatures, just as if all the spokes of a wheel are fitted rightly to the hub and the rim, they are bound to be in right positions to one another."

Hope =
"Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at Earth and you will get neither. We must learn to want something more. The real want for heaven is present in us, but we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise."

Love =
"Our [agape, giving love] must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

"All You Need to Know About Raising Girls"

A book by Melissa Trevathan and Sissy Goff, this book is the one Amazon recommended to me as a complimentary book to "Wild Things: the Art of Nurturing Boys". Here is the Amazon page for it: http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Girls-Melissa-Trevathan/dp/0310272890/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
When I started reading this book, I was surprised and glad to see what a Christian focus it took - there was no trying to be sly about Christianity in this book. But, I was dismayed when I read that book authors were older women who were counselors and yet had never been married and never had children. I wondered how I could take their advice seriously, when I would be able to write off everything they said with the old, "Well, they've never lived this out. and they don't know what it's really like outside of the clinical environment." However, I came to repent of that attitude as I realised that they actually had an objective voice (or voices) that I did respect. Moms can tend to view, or skew things in a way that is biased by their own experiences; but these women didn't have that at all.
That being said, I think overall it was a helpful book - but a lot lighter fare than "Wild Things: the Art of Nurturing Boys". Although the authors spoke more about being a Christian parent; they also tended to tell a lot of stories and spend time on what I might call "fluff".
It does go into all the relationships in a girls life: her and her mother, her and her father, her and her siblings, her and her grandparents, etc.. And I think the descriptions of the different developmental stages were pretty accurate. So, the book does get my recommendation - just be aware that there is some "fluff" and that the authors are not parents.
-j-

Enjoying Nature

I wanted to share some quotes on the enjoying of nature. Not every one of these come from a Christian perspective; but some of them do. And, being a Christian who feels very close to God when enjoying nature, I can appreciate these a great deal.

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."
-John Muir

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man."
-Orison Swett Marden

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
-Albert Einstein

"By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet."
-Thomas Merton

self-focus vs. others-focus

“The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.” -George MacDonald

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
-Tennessee Williams

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
Garrison Keillor

"For most of my life I thought that the way to be happy was to have as many pleasurable experiences as you could. Sounds reasonable, doesnt it? But as it turns out, one of lifes many cruel whims is that happiness and pleasure are often at complete odds. For me, one of the most unpleasant things in life is writing. I hate writing. I hate having to sit down to a blank screen every day and create something. Id so much rather curl up in front of my TV and watch some mindless movie. That would bring me a lot more pure pleasure. On the other hand, except for my boys, nothing in life brings me more happiness than writing. So on the days I do surrender to the lure of instant gratification, I wind up feeling miserable. Its often true that while displeasure lies in the doing, happiness lies in the having done."

- Rick Reynolds

"Love makes everything lovely"
-George MacDonald