Joe Marlin

“Unless we spend as much time looking at God as we spend looking at our self, our knowing of our self will simply draw us further and further into an abyss of self-fixation.”
― David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“The gifts of the Spirit are adornments to our Christian life, adornments of a loving God to His bride. They are important and precious, but peripheral. That is, they are not the main means of Christian living. Too many Christians today focus on a cosmetic view of Christianity in which they see themselves in self-improvement programs. Come to Jesus and get your marriage fixed. Come to Jesus and become prosperous. Come to Jesus and get this or that blessing or whatever thing they are looking for. We emphasize strongly to come to Jesus because He is worthy to be worshipped, whether or not He fixes our marriages or heals our bodies or gives us new cars. We may go through life with a marriage partner who for one reason or another is never going to come to Christ or relate in a proper way, but Jesus is still worthy of our loyalty. The commitment call to Christ is also to the community of Christ, the Church. This means we must learn to love the people we wouldn’t necessary even like. This means learning to relate in community with people in a variety of settings: everything from living together in small groups to living independent of one another but interacting as community once, twice or three times a week in meetings and personal relationships. Acts 2:42 reads, “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the Apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and giving to anyone as he had need.”
― John Wimber, Everyone Gets to Play