Gordon T. Smith > Quotes

“The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest but wholeheartedness... we are typically exhausted because we are not doing our TRUE work.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“Nothing is so fundamental to the spiritual life as learning to give thanks.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Spiritual Direction: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Direction

“If Roman Catholic Christianity has always struggled with the threat of works righteousness, Reformed Protestantism has always struggled with the threat of cheap grace. For many, if not the majority of Protestants, God's love and acceptance do not lead to personal transformation. Evangelical formation often involves seeking to reestablish a pattern of maturing behaviour that should be integral to one's conversion. So both traditions can be challenged on whether there is a genuinely helpful connection between conversion and transformation.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation

“There are many unknowns in life. This is patently clear again and again when we face vocational transitions. We cannot see around the bend in the road. We make decisions about our lives with implications for the lives of those we love and those for whom we have some responsibilities, and there are so many unknown variables. But there is one key variable that can be a known factor in our lives:      The LORD will keep             your going out and your coming in             from this time on and forevermore. (Ps 121:8) On this we can depend. It will be the same now and for each transition of our lives. If we believe this, it will be evident because fear will no longer co-opt our lives.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Consider Your Calling: Six Questions for Discerning Your Vocation

“Something is askew when our passion for the truth blinds us to other perspectives and to the grace to be able to differ graciously from others and learn from others who may see things very differently than we do.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“For many, hectic activity provides a kind of perpetual adrenalin rush. Often those consumed by busyness feel as though this pattern of life and work legitimizes them. They feel important; they feel needed; they feel alive. However, they have a false sense of life and importance, and eventually it leaves them feeling hollow.
It”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“...the wisdom of spiritual direction is precisely that we refuse to stand between God and the person who so needs to hear God for himself, for herself.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Spiritual Direction: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Direction

“Some people suggest that we should no longer use the word vocation because it has lost its meaning and force. But to stop using this wonderful word would be to cave in to a false notion of vocation. We must recover the original meaning. We must restore to our communities and to our language an understanding of vocation as calling - as something that is fundamentally sacred and that enables us, in response to God's call - to embrace what God would have us be and do in the church and in the world.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“Thus vocational integrity includes the capacity, to use golfing language, to play one's lie: to proceed without complaint about the weather, the depth of the rough, the capacities of the groundskeeper, the noise of the children in the nearby backyards, the quality of the conversation in your foursome or the refusal of other golfers to turn off their cell phones. We just play the shot. This is real life; we do not have the option of picking up the ball and finding a better spot from which to play. We play the lie.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity

“Richard Lovelace’s book Dynamics of Spiritual Life,”
― Gordon T. Smith, Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity

“To put it bluntly, people who are out of touch with their emotions are out of touch with God, for God speaks to us through the ebb and flow of our emotional lives.”
― Gordon T. Smith, The Voice of Jesus: Discernment, Prayer and the Witness of the Spirit

“Good work requires of us an appreciation of the value of routine, ordinary, mundane rhythms of doing what needs to be done, each day and each week, thoroughly and with care.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“Part of the reason why we feel these transitions so keenly is that we know that our lives matter.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“each transition will involve some kind of loss. Growth will always be costly; a new venture will always involve some form of letting go. It may be a matter of separation—from parents or from those who are part of an old way or an old world. It may involve leaving behind the comfortable and the secure. Each transition will be a small death, and the new life, the new opportunity and the new challenge will only come as we let go.”
― Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential

“We can challenge and encourage one another, but we cannot live the Christian life or respond to the convicting ministry of the Spirit for one another.”
― Gordon T. Smith, The Voice of Jesus: Discernment, Prayer and the Witness of the Spirit