Mark Combs

“Audit your adult years. Can you mark any moments where your view of (and hope for) the future changed the course of your life, whether for good or bad? Try to come up with five. Create a plan to mark every moment throughout this next week where God’s promised future of glory, goodness, and resurrected life enters your thoughts. I want you to see how often or seldom you allow God’s good future to make its way into your daily life.”
― Jefferson Bethke, Fighting Shadows: Overcoming 7 Lies That Keep Men From Becoming Fully Alive

“The reason so many men think they don’t have any control over their present is because they don’t have any expectation about their future. They see life as something that is happening to them. And when you live without expectation, despair is just around the corner. But let me tell you right now, brothers—despair is evil. It’s from the Enemy. It’s a poison. And you have to go after it, or else it will kill you.”
― Jefferson Bethke, Fighting Shadows: Overcoming 7 Lies That Keep Men From Becoming Fully Alive

“When we get up out of bed in the morning, among our first thoughts should be this: Lord, speak to me. I’m listening. I want to hear your voice. This is not because it’s a nice way to start the day, but because the only thing that can keep us straight is being full of God and full of his Word. If you don’t do something like this, you do not have the option of having a neutral mind. Your thoughts cannot be empty. As the old saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. If you are not entertaining God’s truth, you will be entertaining Satan’s lies. This is what happened to each one living in the days of Noah when “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Now contrast that with Jesus.”
― Dallas Willard, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23

“What have been the moments in your life when you’ve most felt despair? What areas of your heart and story does despair touch? Can you trace a misplaced hope behind it? A hope that is cheaper and lesser than our truest hope? And can you renounce that false hope right now?”
― Jefferson Bethke, Fighting Shadows: Overcoming 7 Lies That Keep Men From Becoming Fully Alive