Paul Coughlin > Quotes

“But false niceness can never and will never produce an authentic, deeply meaningful relationship, just like weeds won’t magically produce zinnias.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“When you allow the immature to dictate the terms of relationships, you are giving them the green light to exploit, neglect, or abuse you.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“As long as the relationships are beneficial and in line with God’s Word, you have the freedom to associate with people of your choice.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Firmly speaking the truth in love and maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships will teach most people to treat you respectfully.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Examples of passive-aggressive behavior in relationships include repeated instances of: • Lateness • Procrastination • Forgetfulness • Sullenness • Stubbornness • Refusal to comprehend • Resistance to suggestions • Intentional withholding of needed information • Talking behind someone’s back • Hostile sarcasm*”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Jesus is most definitely not one-sided. He is the complete embodiment of healthy, balanced human personality; thus, Jesus is immensely compassionate, kind, and gracious while also being assertive, forceful, and firm when necessary. He is good, but he’s definitely not “nice” or as safe as many Christians want to believe.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. 1 Corinthians 16:13 nlt”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Immature people will not receive loving truth, no matter how gently you offer it.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“When you start thinking like Christ, you are guaranteed to sometimes make choices that offend and anger other people.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“A lot of what people call nice behavior is really fear, cowardice, and even sin in disguise. Many women are nice not because they truly care about other people, but because they fear conflict and rejection. That’s not peacemaking. That’s peace-faking, and their God-given consciences have been telling them this truth for a long time.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Spiritually immature people wear themselves (and their friends) out with their foolish choices and words. If you cultivate close relationships with them, you will harvest truckloads of trouble, such as repeatedly being lied to, taken advantage of, and disrespected.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:38–39). Be careful how you interpret this passage because Jesus is teaching here that people shouldn’t retaliate with harmful words or actions of their own when they are harmed by others. Simply put, don’t seek revenge, but do seek to create healthy boundaries with other people.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“God doesn’t expect perfection—he wants good women who are motivated by deep love for him and who aren’t afraid to make a few mistakes along the way.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“At times, being assertive does involve disagreeing with others; however, that disagreement can be done in a way that is not needlessly confrontational and painful.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“If you cannot hate the wrong, it is very questionable whether you really love righteousness.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children

“Christian Nice Girls, because they fear rejection, tend to get their feelings hurt when other people have good boundaries and say things like, “I’m busy right now. Let’s look at next month.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“the essence of what General Douglas MacArthur said is right: All defense and no offense doesn’t get you very far. General Patton provides supporting cover when he advised, “Never let the enemy choose the battlefield.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children

“If you will consistently speak the truth in love and display gracious firmness, you will grow in maturity and find that you are attracting a healthy crop of spiritually mature friends.*”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“You have the freedom to change your mind as long as those decisions are beneficial, in line with God’s Word, and don’t permanently harm the people around you.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Firmly speaking the truth in love and maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships will teach most people to treat you respectfully. However, not everyone is teachable [...]

If someone is not teachable, you will completely waste your time and energy if you try to teach them what they aren’t interested in learning or changing. They aren’t in a relationship with you to grow and develop; instead, they believe they can use you to meet their own needs regardless of whether you are harmed”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“[Women] tend to see the workplace as a network of connections where friendships are established as people cooperate to produce work. Nothing is wrong with that viewpoint until you realize that, by and large, the work world was created by men—males who tend to see the workplace as a field for competition”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“You have the freedom (and the responsibility) to rest. So take a nap.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Though we all hold our opinions dear, a hard fact of life is that all opinions are not created equal. Someone has to make a final call or else a church will flounder.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children

“Even Jesus gave people a dose of Vitamin No sometimes.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“The need is not always the call.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“Many times expecting personal transformation to happen without humility is like expecting a car to move forward without fuel.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children

“Physical courage is the type involved in overcoming the fear of physical injury or death in order to save others or oneself. Moral courage entails maintaining ethical integrity or authenticity at the risk of losing friends, employment, privacy, or prestige. Psychological courage includes that sort required to confront a debilitating illness or destructive habit or situation; it is the bravery inherent in facing one’s inner demons.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children

“in the Bible, neither God nor Jesus went around healing people willy-nilly. Whoever wanted to be changed had to cooperate in the process, and many times had to ask directly for what they wanted.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“God likes his women with a firm will that aligns with his will. Strong, courageous women who get in line with the will of God are destined to change their corner of the world.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends

“girls learn from their culture that anger, open and expressed, is forbidden for Nice Girls. Christian Nice Girls get the double whammy: Anger is not just wrong for women, it’s sinful. From all directions, girls learn “Don’t speak up, don’t speak the truth, don’t get angry, preserve your relationships at all costs,” so they learn to avoid confrontation and use hidden ways of getting what they want. Tragically, by not being honest and straightforward with others as Christ modeled, Christian girls sabotage the very relationships they are trying to preserve.”
― Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends