Marla > Recent Status Updates

(Speaking of people in the Bible who murdered, were adulterers, and schemers) "God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly. God can restore the years the locusts have eaten. It is said that those who never make mistakes never make anything. Certainly these men made mistakes, but through their mistakes, God taught them to know His grace...in a way that would never have happened otherwise."

" Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into his plan for us and brings good out of them.... Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God's promise; this is how good He is."

"Bent and broken, but in better shape."

"Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success."

" How many of our churches today are sound, respectable---and lukewarm?"

"..We lose our wrong ideas of God and the church.(Thank God!) What makes it so difficult is how much we invested of our lives into a certain way of following Jesus, into certain applications of biblical truths, only to realize much of it was foolishness or perhaps even wrong. We feel betrayed by a church tradition a leader or even God himself. We realize God...is much larger, more incomprehensible than we thought."

" He knows, and foreknows, all things.... He therefore will have the last word both in world history and in the destiny of every man. His kingdom and righteousness will triumph in the end, for neither men nor angels shall be able to thwart him"

Quiet the noise. Clear the clutter. And then? Consider that your next right thing might be disruptive, bring discomfort, or reveal a difficult truth. What people need most is your solid presence and your steadfast insistence on being okay with or without their consent.

Before rushing forward, take some time to reflect on the path behind you.
What do you need to bring with you?
What are you able to leave behind?
Where have you seen God along the way?
Ask for what you need to know. Remain open to seeing things in ways you might not expect. We don't stop living just because we are unsure. We continue on, trusting God as we simply do the next right thing.

Booker T. Washington "It is impossible to hold a man in the gutter, without staying there with him"

"I wrote this book because I have long suspected that the best Americans are not always famous. More than 20 years of research has confirmed my intuition. The best Americans are not the critics, they are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down."

" I couldn't have imagined that nearly one year from that very day we would walk out of this room for the last time. I couldn't have imagined willingly leaving....
I couldn't have imagined then, that in order to hold on to my faith, I would have to let go of my church."

"In college, my best friend confessed his most secret sin to our pastor. Sitting on our pastor's deep set porch, he told him what he was most ashamed of. Then my pastor said something that utterly transformed my friend: "We need you in our church, not in spite of your struggle but because of it."

" The Psalms express every human emotion, but taken up again and again, they never simply leave us as we are. They change us. The transformation they effect isn't to turn our sadness into happiness. They don't take grieving people and make them annoyingly peppy and optimistic.
They form us into a people who can hold the depths of our sorrow with utter honesty even as we hold to the promises of God."

"I've seen the oldest story, redeemed by the ancient story, more times than I can count. Each one a miracle. "

"Don't you forget it, Lucy my girl. The God of the stars...He is coming, and coming, and coming after you. Always. The heart of a father who will never forget his daughter."

"Such freedom to know our limits. And to know the God who has none"

"We lift even our disobedience into the arms of the Father; He It's strong enough to carry the weight." So many words of simple, profound encouragement and wisdom in this book.

"Healthy prayer necessitates frequent experiences of the common, earthy, run of the mill variety. Like walks and talks and good wholesome laughter. Like work in the yard, and chit chat with neighbors, and washing windows. Like loving our spouse, and playing with our kids...To be spiritually fit to scale the Himalayas of the spirit, we need regular exercise in the hills and valleys of ordinary life."