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Where am I?" you ask. Where you are is where the things you've denied worshipping have taken you. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Greatness demands that I understand that I am not nearly as big as I thought myself to be, but that I am capable of becoming far bigger than I ever imagined myself to be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Looking back, I now realize that I left home in search of all the things that were right in the very place I left. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
One of the most terrifying things I fear is not my potential, but how much regret I'll die with should I never use it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Rarely do I truly understand the disease which ails me. Therefore, rarely do I truly understand the fix that would cure me. And so maybe I should truly contemplate how rarely I recognize that God understands both. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we limit love to being nothing more than a feeling, we have no real feeling for what love is. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To maximize our lives we think that we should get up and join in the race. Yet, we rarely consider that maybe it's less about joining a race and more about actually creating one. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When I'm at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be 'how do I get out of this hole?' In reality, the main question might be 'how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have a choice. We can be jaded by what we've lost, or joyous over what that thing had accomplished while we had it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe we ought to consider that sometimes the most destructive outcomes in our lives are the ones that we've created. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can ruthlessly press my imagination out beyond its very edges, and even in such a remote place I have not begun to touch the barest periphery of God's imagination. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Denial is a seductive ruse of our own making, force-fitting our agendas by forcing out truth all because we bent to fear rather than bowed to God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Death is a reality that calls the rest of life and all of our assorted strivings into sharp relief. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite the fact that life has repeatedly reinforced my conviction that the tomb was empty, some of my most profound errors have occurred when I was straining under the weight of a death that was in reality the liberation of a transition. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To ascend the mountain, we must descend to our knees. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the truth gets in the way, I will remove it. But truth be told, removing the truth never removes the truth. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I will not find myself, nor will I obtain any precarious morsel of life in giving all of life to myself. If I am ever to find these things, I must first be willing to give these things away at the very moment that I come into possession of them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The only things I truly keep are those things that I give away. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In evaluating ourselves, we tend to be long on our weaknesses and short on our strengths. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We're not dictated by the calendar, nor does the calendar sweep the obstructions from our lives when the second hand reaches midnight in the wee and fleeting hours of December. We can choose to move toward something new at any time. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Truth even in the most whispered tones will always roar. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Life is bigger than any of us will ever be as an individual. Purpose tells us that we're specifically designed to engage every bit of that. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Expectations are the shackles that will not permit something to be what it actually is. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our best-laid plans are often our worst-made decisions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I must not imagine what is 'not' as a means of escaping what 'is'. Rather, I must understand what 'is' and imagine how I can make it what it is 'not'. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I simply can't look into the heavens on a crisp starry night and somehow bring myself to believe that the gaping expanse that engulfs the whole of me is the product of chance happenstance. And neither can I believe that the gaping expanse that rests within me is anything less. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Being lost without grasping the rather obvious fact that we are lost is by far the best guarantee we have that we're going to stay lost. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God's love is marvelous and mysterious, and no effort of man - no matter how elegant or purposeful - can explain that. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Such is the power of truth that even the slightest whisper of it can handily drown out the most boisterous of lies, which may explain why in many instances God only needs to whisper. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To label myself is similar to thinking that I can come up with a single phrase to explain the universe. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Jesus came to give us life without leaving out any of life in the giving. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite how utterly massive they might be, it is never the size of the arsenal nor the strength of the warrior. Rather, it is a heart bent on sacrifice that is the most potent weapon of all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
While we tediously check our weaponry before entering into battle, do we check our hearts? For without exception, that is the greatest weapon of all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We know enough to know that all of this is not quite right. And we know enough to know that settling for what's not quite right is quite wrong. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Pain and love are not the 'either or' of life, being somehow mutually exclusive. Opposite though they may be, it is the energy of the friction between them that when harnessed, molds us into Christ-likeness. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why in the world have we never found what we're really looking for? Because what we need is often the very thing we won't accept. And sadly, in turning away the God we need, we need to understand that we have chosen to live without everything we need. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
At the point that it dawns on me that I am not God I have finally made room for God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There are an incalculable number of things within me that I frantically wish to be emptied of, and despite my most earnest efforts to remove them, they remain. And it is Easter that reminds me that God empties out tombs. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To judge someone is to say that I have the right to define who they are, verses understanding that God has handed me the priceless privilege of discovering who they are. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Judging others shackles them to the cold iron of our limited notions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Judging others is too often escapism dressed in the garb of righteous indignation, whereby I dutifully point out in others that which I probably should be pointing out in myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Could it be that we lost something because had we not lost it, we would have lost ourselves? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is the fool who declares 'I am ascending the summit,' while he's toddling around in the ditch. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, being lost is nothing more than an idea that never has and never will be anything more than an idea. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Due north' on my compass is largely 'due' to the fact that in 'due' time I have been 'unduly' lax in recalibrating my compass. And I'm apparently ignorant enough to wonder why I'm lost. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The paralyzing fear of being lost is fed solely by the irrational fear that we will never be found. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We look around us and we find ourselves confused as to why the world has fallen into such deep darkness. And standing in this descending darkness, what we need to realize is that the farther we move from God, the darker everything gets. And no light of man can illuminate that kind of darkness. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The most formidable way to lead is to serve. And while the perplexing oxymoron of such a grinding statement absolutely cripples us, it birthed a Savior. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God it's not about beholding life, but being held ourselves in the act of beholding it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
How often do I stand in abject terror and raw trepidation before the impossible peaks that soar to impossible heights in front me, when God turns to me and calmly says "what mountains? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Bobbing and weaving are methods and maneuvers by which we bend ethics, water down morals, and parse down values to serve our agendas. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest men stand on their values and pray on their knees. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we dare examine our decisions, we will see our values woven in and through every single one of them. Therefore, it would do us well to take an occasional peek to insure that our values remain at their peak. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is, I think, a far lesser offense to blatantly ignore God's directions for our lives rather than arrogantly think ourselves shrewd enough to be able to bend them to our liking without breaking them and therefore breaking ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
How many times has our conscience firmly prompted us to 'draw the line,' and we showed up with an eraser? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Self-serving biases and self-centered agendas are cotton jammed in the ears of our conscience. Even if truth shouts, we can't hear it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Timeless principles never age, and truth is as young as the day it was spoken into existence. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is it reasonable to assume that the jarring nature of a particular consequence might be the very thing that strong-arms us away from making the poor choice that we didn't see as a poor choice? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We got where we are because our choices mapped the route and paved the road. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My life is a series of invitations accepted and invitations rejected, and the place I now find myself is often a result of accepting the wrong invitations and rejecting the right ones. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is the final solution to the finality of death. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The fear of getting knocked down is less about the pain of the fall and more about the embarrassment in having fallen. And so, to rid myself of the latter is to reduce my concern about the former, which means I just unleashed my life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I cannot live without you. For to attempt to do so would be to rob both of us of each other, and that is thievery of the greatest sort. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To understand the mysteries of God we must move past the logic of men. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the deepest darkness God tenderly grasps my hand and whispers that darkness is nothing more than a place that He is preparing for the arrival of light. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
How often is my tidy and well-appointed world nothing but the thin veneer of an imagination that I've chosen to use in the service of denial, rather than a gift I've chosen to exercise out of a passion for change? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To assist us in climbing the mountains is marvelous. To level the mountains and altogether eliminate the climb is miraculous. And at times I think that God prefers the latter because it emboldens us to face the former. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without mountains, we might find ourselves relieved that we can avoid the pain of the ascent, but we will forever miss the thrill of the summit. And in such a terribly scandalous trade-off, it is the absence of pain that becomes the thief of life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We can only climb the mountains because there's a valley that makes the mountain a mountain. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The length of the fall is dictated by how far we had climbed. The outcome of the fall is dictated by whether we're holding on to that which we're climbing, or we're letting God hold onto us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am always standing at the bottom of the mountain longingly looking up, in all probability it is because I have heeded the pillaging dogma of mediocrity which persistently tells me that the dream is not worth the climb. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Many of our efforts to intentionally craft and subsequently force our limited vision on life has more often than not resulted in some degree of cataclysm or schism or division or any number of other things that aren't all that savory. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why is it that none of the things I construct ever make me feel safe? The answer lies in the fact that safety can't be created. It can only be found. And the only thing I've found that's never been created is God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Good tells us that our agenda is the agenda of the person next to us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Truth is its own defense, therefore if something can't speak for itself, it's not truth. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There are consequences to ignoring consequences that are a consequence of my blatant unwillingness to learn from my consequences. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love knows nothing of short hauls because it has committed itself for the long haul. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is not the chains of some tyrant that robs us of freedom. Rather, it is the staleness of our attitude. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can bow to fear and flee the pursuit of great things. I can bow to God and engage in the pursuit of making things great. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God's eyes readily see beyond our actions, for our actions are simply fear and selfishness pretending to be us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To incessantly blame others for my shortcomings is cowardice borne of fear, fed by fear, and haunted by fear. To be steadfastly accountable for my shortcomings is bravery borne of God, fed by God, and blessed by God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Far too often, it is at the moment where we finally stand on the very precipice of some great thing that we turn and abandon it, for it is at these seminal moments that fear wins and greatness dies. The beauty of Christmas is that God steps over precipices. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In a relationship with God, our most secret places once thickly cloaked and meticulously hidden away now stand before us utterly and entirely exposed. And it may be that this dreaded fear is the single thing that keeps us an arm's length from God, and forever a single step away from His blessings. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The point that I think myself to be so terribly clever is the precise point at which I am beginning to think myself to be god-like, which causes me to become God-less. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There is wisdom in realizing that God's unimaginable design within us is a design that will always thrust our short-sighted boundaries out to horizons that we can't even fathom. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I might define a 'journey' as something that life itself calls me to. And I might then define a 'trip' as something I create to avoid a journey by mimicking a journey. And while fear is most certainly part and parcel of both, the latter is emboldened by fear while the former surrenders to it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The choice to avoid risk is the choice to avoid living, and to avoid living is one of the greatest risk of all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To seek the praise of men as our motivation is to abandon truly great things, for more often than not truly great things elicit the ire of men far more than they garner their praises. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The line that we chart into our future is often more a circle that brings us back to our past. And it might be that there is some hidden intent in charting circles in that we can feel like we're moving when we actually have no intent of doing so. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite our battered exterior and in spite of the festering scars and rank filth that overlays it, there is underneath it all the pristine likeness of God Himself. And we would be wise to cast an eye not on the marred exterior, but to be fixed on the glorious interior. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I assume the 'truth' to be negotiable based on whether or not it serves my agenda, then my agenda has become my 'truth.' And the 'truth' of the matter is, when I do this I've chosen to take a treacherous path through some very deep woods where neither path nor woods exist. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thankfulness allows us to walk through a world inundated by opportunities and possessions, being slaves to neither. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would entertain the apparently fading idea that patriotism that serves the self is greed dressed in the garments of liberty and adorned with the fashion accessories of other associated patriotic notions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it's adhering to our scripts or not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In my desperation, I have finally discovered that the only way that I can begin to fill the gaping hole within me is to be thankful for what's there, and not angry for what's not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am most thankful for what I don't have, for had my life's wish list been filled in the manner I had chosen I would be steeped in meaningless trinkets verses bathed in God's treasures. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To find one's purpose is to discover one's worth, discern one's direction, wholly dedicate oneself to the journey, and forge an unbending determination that I will not leave the world the way I found it. This week's blog outlines the finding of our purpose. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I'm conceited enough to believe I'm invincible, then maybe it will take me doing the very thing I swore I would never do to understand that I'm not as wonderful as I thought I was. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
You are greater than you can possibly imagine, if you would only free yourself up to imagine. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Dreams must be chased, for if we wait for them to chase us we will live a life of waiting. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We may find great relief and inexplicable solace in purposefully looking beyond grief in order to determine the provision made within it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My fear of standing alone often pressures me to stand with a rather unsavory group that embraces a rather unsettling belief system which leaves me wondering why I left the promises of God for the company of people. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
True peace cannot be found in a 'place'. Rather, it is found in a Person who can be with you in any 'place'. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
This is the wonder of Christmas, that in the solitary form of an impoverished infant God has handed me everything that I could never create so that I can be everything that I could never be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Through the eyes of men an utterly irrational birth followed by a terribly improbable execution are miscues of the most pathetic sort. And all I can say is that I'm immeasurably thankful that I've been given access to the eyes of God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's not so much about writing the story of Christmas itself, as ingenious as it is. In reality, it's much more about writing the story of Christmas into the story of life so that it will become the story of life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Kicking the proverbial can down the road only increases the size of the can. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Once I have impounded love and towed it into the confine of words, I have lost it altogether. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The hands of man can manufacture many things both penetratingly brilliant and utterly astounding. Yet, despite their amazing dexterity and profound skill they cannot manufacture hope. Such a masterpiece as that is left for the hands of God and a manger crafted by those hands. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without a beginning I am pouring the whole of my existence into the building of endings, while the cross and the resurrection declare that God is incessantly building beginnings from the collapse of endings. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The message of Christmas is a message of hope when all other such messages created by men can do nothing more than be hopeful. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Will I live yearning for a world that I need not yearn for because the message of Christmas is entirely undaunted in its ability to handily penetrate and completely subjugate the very world that I doubt its ability to survive in? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ask someone about their day before you ask yourself how you're going to get through yours. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We desperately want to believe in something. To simply live out our lives believing in nothing is to live as if this thing we call life is filled with nothing but nothing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Today's ashes are tomorrow's soil. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can be absolutely assured that any endeavor of which God is not a part is most certainly a step backward. And any step backward is at least two steps behind where I'd be if I'd have gone forward in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God's beginning. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When standing face to face with myself, I far too often refuse to look in the mirror. When standing face to face with God, there is no place where a mirror is not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We might do well to take a look at what we've crammed into our pockets as it will say much about what we've crammed into our hearts. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Bravery is not found in getting knocked down. Rather, bravery is found is getting back up knowing that you're going to get knocked down again. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I need to immerse the fabric of my soul in torrential nature of Christmas, and in doing so to finally understand that it is the very thing that can make the world what I so wish it were. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My prayer is that God would continue to love me enough to refuse to answer the prayers I'm praying that I shouldn't be praying. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I thought myself sufficiently shrewd to make whatever decisions I wanted to make, and then to be able to sufficiently steer those decisions away from the rather dark and nasty places they would naturally take me. And I stand oddly perplexed that suddenly everything around me is dark and nasty. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe my greater fear should not be fear itself, but what I will lose should I submit to fear. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think that it is infinitely wiser to accept the fact that we're afraid, for in accepting our fear we are in no way granting it the power to crush us. Rather we are finally empowering ourselves sufficiently so that we can crush it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When we actually refer to God's blueprint, we gladly work in fascinated conjunction with it, suddenly realizing that any other action outside of that blueprint is foolhardiness and lunacy of the worst sort. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
More times than I can remember I look around and I ask why the hole I'm in looks so strangely familiar. Probably because it looks a whole lot like all the other ones I dug before I got around to digging this one. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have diligently disciplined my life to search out life's gifts in the very places where society mistakenly says life stores its scraps. And I am constantly amazed that in the treasure trove that surrounds me, I stand in the company of so few. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Whatever I 'align' myself with are the very things that will create a 'line' into my future. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To make a choice not to sacrifice is to decide that I am better off allowing a life to perish than release the resources I possess that might allow it to thrive. And because of choices such as these, the life that I am really allowing to perish is mine. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Arrogance is a map of a road that leads to bridges that are out. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's not that I've 'faked my own death' as the saying goes. Maybe it's that I've 'faked my own life,' and in doing so I've yet to realize how dead I really am. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sure, things die. Yet hard on the heels of every death there comes a birth. And if the life around me is being perpetually refreshed in such a relentless manner, why would I think that the life within me can't have the same experience. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am indeed my own god, I'd better start praying to myself to get myself out of myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
More times than I'm willing to admit I am my own worst enemy, which suggests that more times than I'm willing to admit I should allow God to be my own best friend. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Once I finally understand the immensity of my own impoverishment, I am finally in a position to see the enormity of God's majesty. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I pray that I am never so foolishly naive or roguishly pompous to think that I can be the captain of my own ship, for if God is not at the helm my ship will soon be at the bottom. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If truth is relative, then it's cousin is anarchy. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love means that we remain committed to loving even at the times when the emotion is so diminished or altogether missing that we can't feel it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Vigilance of the wisest kind is to incessantly remain open to the reality that what I 'see' is but a single thread and solitary shard of what 'is', for to assume otherwise is to surrender the wisdom of vigilance to the decay of ignorance. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Of course I fall. Yet, I incessantly blame my falls on circumstance so that I can deny my own inadequacy and therefore remain my own god. And so, I am left to ask which will come first, the fall that kills me or the surrender that saves me? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Next to our search for God, our search for our purpose is an adventure that leaves all other adventures as largely adventure-less. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often there is this sinister greed that pulls at my coattails, subtly whispering in the ear of my soul that it is within my rights to tuck away a few dark trinkets to toy with when the tedium of righteous living gets a bit boring. But God would suggest that I empty my pockets. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Have we ever considered that Godly morals might be the precision-crafted keys that effortlessly turn the tumblers of life? And have we considered that anything else is something like a rough screwdriver trying to force a lock open? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I don't know who I am apart from everyone else, I probably need to spend some time apart from everyone else. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What excites us the most or likewise scares us the most is when something is exactly what it says it is. And when it comes to Christmas, we're going to end up finding ourselves on one side of that line or the other. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We tend to perseverate on the fact that as far as we might have fallen, there's always another bottom underneath the one we're laying on. Yet, for every bottom underneath us, there's always endless opportunity above us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Somewhere, somehow, something arises out of the ashes of our losses to remind us that nothing ever ceases. Nothing ever vanishes. Nothing ever comes to nothing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are always immeasurably bigger than the little person we've too often doomed ourselves to be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God would have us cherish even the smallest of blessings, for in taking a blessing for granted we are well on our way to taking it to its grave. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In choosing to exchange precious principles for worthless impulses, I have far too often bankrupted my soul in order to bankroll my ego. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Death reminds us that life is a temporary privilege, not an endless right. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
At the very point that I've taken something for granted, I have at that same moment taken it to its grave. And if I look around, I realize I've cultivated quite a cemetery. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fairness is not something to which we are entitled. Rather, it is something for which we hope. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
One of the greatest lies is to believe that we don't have value. One of the greatest mistakes is to act on that belief. And the greatest liberation is found in looking at the cross of Christ and realizing the enormity of the lie. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often fear is fiction madly running amuck, all the while madly tracking 'muck' across the floor of fact. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When the world does its level best to devalue me in ways that are nothing short of brutal, all it does is evidence my value. For why would it expend such massive amounts of energy attempting to destroy something that's not there? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The death of our self-worth begins at its appraisal, for such an action erroneously implies that our worth can be quantified. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What I do is the truest mirror of who I am. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What insanity propels me to incessantly invest in a world that never ceases to fail me? And what ignorance bewitches me so thoroughly that it keeps me from investing in a God who never ceases to be unfailing? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The clash is born of the fact that the child within me sees with undiluted clarity what the adult within me is incessantly working to deny. And in these most vexing moments, to be the adult is to defer to the child. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Things that are truly great need nothing from me, and to somehow think that they do speaks to my utter lack of greatness. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Starting over is an acceptance of a past we can't change, an unrelenting conviction that the future can be different, and the stubborn wisdom to use the past to make the future what the past was not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The art of living is to rise above lesser things so that we can truly enjoy great things. And the message of Christmas is the greatest of all things. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think myself so terribly 'clever' that the need for God is blatantly irrelevant. And all the while, in the rapidly growing mess that I'm 'cleverly' creating, I rather quickly begin to realize that the only thing that is relevant is His relevance. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear says that what God has called me to is blatantly impossible. Selfishness says that the cost is unacceptably prohibitive. My humanity harbors other lesser agendas that seduce me to my own death. And I would be wise to believe none of it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To intentionally pass on opportunity is to intentionally pass on living. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I'm ignoring behind me. Instead, it's most certain to drop it on top of me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Being our best is asking how can we take ourselves to the precipice of our own limits in any and every situation? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have both the violent turbulence of the storm and the quiet promises of God in the storm. And what I must work to remember is that something is not necessarily stronger simply because it's louder. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We want greatness, but we prefer it tamed and on a leash short enough for us to control it, yet long enough to allow it to retain some remote yet diminished flavor of greatness. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I realize that I render people invisible because I am too ridiculously busy traveling to places far and wide to see people as anything more than an expendable tool to be used to facilitate those travels. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite my incessant desperation, I simply cannot paint the perfect picture within which I would wish to live out my life. And because I cannot, God picked up the brush of love, positioned the canvas of history and painted a manger. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Anything great will only be appreciated if I am given the opportunity to feel the absence of it, or experience the reversal of it. It is only then that I can even begin to understand its majesty and cherish it in the manner I should have all along. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
An obese ego is just about the heaviest thing you'll ever carry. So maybe you should stop feeding it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem that I think I have with God is often not a problem at all. Rather, it is most frequently a tired misperception where I have made God what I need Him to be in order to justify my rejection of Him. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Given the lethal enormity of sin and the inestimable value of a single soul, a baby in a manger and a man on a cross makes more sense that anything else I will ever be able to possibly imagine. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The best way to see majesty is to strip away everything that pretends to be majestic so that which is fake wholly collapses in the face of that which is majestic. And God in a manger is likely the most remarkable example we have of such a monumental truth. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can only begin the process of saving myself when I surrender to the reality that I can't. And what greater place to surrender that reality than to an infant who surrendered Himself to me so that I might surrender myself to Him. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When wisdom gives way to whimsy and ethics fall to excitement, it is highly likely that the ground beneath me will 'give way' and it is I who will 'fall. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To attempt to know myself 'apart' from God is to choose to know nothing more than 'a part' of myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I'm seeking out a God who is the insatiable author of countless journeys, but who can still be intimately engaged with every minuscule facet of my journey. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although it would lead me to believe otherwise, fear has little interest in intimidating me. Rather, it much prefers to enslave me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If left to my own simplistic devices and the sorely scant limits of my abilities, would I not die a death of the blandest sort imaginable? And should I not thank God that He graciously gifted me with an imagination that renders such a death entirely unimaginable? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Worlds of my own creation are erected with walls that are within but a few scant paces of each other. The world that God creates for me has no idea what walls are. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A 'good' father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a 'good' father who is also a 'brave' father will let the children without cultivate the child within. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When we surrender to a purposeless existence, we are surrendering to death way ahead of death's actual arrival. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To only see 'death' in death is to somehow assume that death itself is a barrier so abrupt that God Himself is halted by it. To see 'life' in death is to understand that death is a sprawling horizon to a new beginning that God created long before death ever thought to show up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To my own demise, I rarely ask why I'm hungry because I'm focusing all of my energies on getting fed. And if I persist in such a diminishing cycle, in all probability I will eventually starve to death because I have chosen to gorge myself on the very things that will keep me empty. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The worst denial of all is being in denial that we're in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that's not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Simply giving something 'a shot' is not giving something our 'best,' for our best is made up of as many 'shots' as it takes in order to be our best. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's about recognizing that the great movements and moments in history laid on the backs of ordinary people who simply chose to do extraordinary things. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why does not the stunning evidence of the last miracle grant me confidence in the next crisis? Because my immaturity does not permit such a faith, my desperate prayer is that God would grant me a robust faith sufficient to trust Him not for one crisis, but for an eternity of miracles. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I will either adamantly prioritize my agendas at the expense of the truth, or I will consistently bring my agendas into unrelenting obedience to the truth. And if for some reason you're trying to determine who I truly am, the choice I make will tell you. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Any dream that I am absolutely confident I can achieve should immediately be discarded for the simple reason that it is simply too small. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I suppose that one of my greatest problem lays in the fact that I have assumed a blessing to be something that is mine for the taking, verses being something that by sheer exposure to it takes me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In our frenzied attempts to catch up with life, we run right past it. Once we have run past it, what we are in reality attempting to catch is ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without unreservedly surrendering myself to God, whatever place I might raise myself to remains nothing more than a step or possibly two off the hard basement floor of life, for of myself I can be utterly assured that I will never step out of the basement. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our actions in the present build the staircase to the future. The question is whether that staircase is going up or down. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Safety is not a destination that we reach for, rather it is a retreat that we escape to. And if our lives are marked by the incessant search for safety, we will live the whole of it going in reverse. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have errantly romanticized love as something we freely get verses something we sacrifice for in the giving. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without an imagination we would be irreparably shackled to what is, and never be released to what could be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am thankful that in the giving we receive, and what we receive is the satisfaction of knowing that whatever we give is always bigger once we've given it away. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, anything that stands against you will always be inferior to what resides within you. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There appears to be value in getting past a mentality that good things can only rest in good things. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God beckons me to exhilarating adventures that are without number, beyond all conceivable boundaries, and effortlessly eclipse the furthest reaches of my imagination, all while I sit languishing in stifling adventures of my own limited creation. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sacrifice 'of' self for the greater good is the greatest calling imaginable, and it is the bedrock of the greatest nations. The sacrifice 'for' self is the most pathetic calling imaginable, and it is the quicksand within which nations perish. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I want to have the eyes of an adult to see the world as it is, but I more desperately want to have the heart of a child to make certain that I never forget what it could be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Happenstance is the myth of the simple mind, for it is the deliberate genius of God that what appears entirely disjointed always reveals itself to be stunningly seamless. And it is in reflecting on such stunning ingenuity that our faith becomes seamless. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It would do me well to realize that the path that has led me to where I am was mapped by those who taught me and paved by what they taught me. Therefore, if God is not my teacher and His truth is not my topic I will find myself where I don't want to be, having trod a path I didn't want to take. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God has hewn out a hidden path more glorious, tantalizing and adventuresome than the path trod by most, and it is a path seen only through the eyes of our wounds, felt solely through the heart of our losses, and singularly traversed by those with a limp in their step. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem is not that we don't recognize the truth when we hear it. The problem is that we don't want to recognize what the truth might mean for us if we hear it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Somehow we know that there are no greater stories than those penned by God, and we find ourselves distraught by the sad fact that we have chosen to live those lesser stories. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am so often the architect of my own pain and the engineer of my own failures. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our faith may be big enough to elicit a miracle, but our faith is seldom large enough to embrace it once it actually happens. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The assumption of 'rights' is the cancer of privilege. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the thoughtlessness of my incessant hurry, I have made God an 'addendum in' my life verses the 'agenda of' my life. And what I need to hurry up and realize is that with these priorities positioned as such, what I am hurrying to is my own demise. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can confidently state that the greatest rescues in my life have occurred when I've been saved from myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are quick to surrender that which we deem as long dead, when God is quick to restore that which He deems as never really having lived. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our prayers are something akin to delivering a list, verses surrendering a life. The former will always leave me creating the next list, while the latter will leave me creating a new life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I'm my biggest fan, the only person in the stadium is probably me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To be thankful when my world lays in ashes long gone cold is to finally understand that ashes are the raw materials from which God shapes dreams infinitely grander than whatever the ashes were before they were ashes. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I look closely, my failures are less about my inadequacies and more about the fact that I channel my abilities into the wrong places. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It would be infinitely more prudent to be a single "David" standing with God, than a million "Goliath's" standing without Him. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To say that my existence is entirely inconsequential is to utterly ignore the amazing reality that life is a masterful story penned by a brilliant God who wrote me into the story in such a way that my absence would literally diminish the whole of the story. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God holds the power of authentic freedom that both begs and invites us onward to wild liberation. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In many instances, the failures of my greatest schemes ultimately lead to the fulfillment of my greatest successes. Therefore, God will allow our most cherished dreams to perish so that we might turn and seek out His most cherished plans. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Oftentimes I think it is far better to listen for an answer, rather than talk out of an effort to create one. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To lead solely on the behalf of those being led is the utter pinnacle of fatherhood, and it is sad that so few ever stand on the summit. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I must be ever so careful to remember that my pain is a precious salve that when used in the service of others can heal a thousand wounds and more. And I must likewise remember that if I do not use it as such, I have done nothing more than wound myself yet again. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Life however is teeming with vitality and is likewise terribly tenacious; holding on against impossible odds in impossible situations over impossible lengths of time. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
All along, I was less concerned about walking a path of integrity and more caught up in a compass calibrated by greed. And with a compass such as this, how is it that I'm having a hard time understanding why I am where I am? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What I allow into my head finds its way to my heart, which is a porthole to my soul. Therefore, I might be wise to consider the state of my soul, and then walk this process backwards. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I spend a tremendous amount of time carefully choosing the roles I wish to play so that I can run from the role I was born to play. And if I keep on doing that, I will eventually set foot in my grave never having set foot on the stage. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
True evil is unlikely to receive an invitation from us, so it clothes itself in just enough truth to make itself look appealing and then it looks to unpeel us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I am far too frequently convinced otherwise, with God a dead-end is only the death of an end. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I much prefer not to fall, unless of course I am falling into the hands of God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
An ending is only happening because at some point it was a beginning. And if an ending is dependent upon a beginning, I would be well advised to focus on the miracle of beginnings verses the pain of endings. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We can live out our lives, and in the end realize that we never really 'lived' a day in our lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
At the end, a journey based on my imagination will leave me imagining that I should have engaged the very thing I used my imagination to avoid. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What insanity would lead me to believe that I possess the power, much less the aptitude to manipulate all of the consequences out of all of my decisions? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I scan the expanse of my heart and find it empty of everything except emptiness, it is because I 'poured' the whole of my passion into something other than God. And anything other than God will always be too 'poor' to be able to 'pour' back anything that can fill that kind of emptiness. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It might not be about perfection. Rather, it may be that that which is imperfect is that which has the most character. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often the spotlight that highlights our successes burns out quickly, while the spotlight that scrutinizes our failures is a long-life bulb. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I paved the path to the very place I don't want to be. But passing the blame off to someone else doesn't put me any place else. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The presence of a path doesn't necessarily mean the existence of a destination. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The road ahead is not some predetermined path that I am forced to trod, but it is a rich byway that I can help create. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the road behind me is not growing ever longer, then it is likely that the feet underneath me are not moving any longer. And if my feet are not moving, I have somehow, somewhere traded this most glorious journey for lesser endeavors. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To assume that I can even begin to chart a 'straight' path is probably the best way I can take myself 'straight' to the very place I don't want to go. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To love those who hate us is to refuse to borrow their hatred. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The promises of God hold up long after the promises of the world have blown up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe we don't ever feel that sweetly untainted and wholly majestic kind of love that takes every longing captive because we are hopelessly entangled in the illogical fear that despite all of love's grand goodness, it might not be good enough to keep us safe. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Oh God, please find it within your heart to grant me a heart that looks after itself only because it has first looked after others. And help me to realize that anything less is not a heart. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sometimes what is said to be a gift may appear more of a curse only because the greatest gifts of all are the gifts that have enough disruptive force to break us out of everything that's breaking us. And God loves us far too much not to give us exactly those kinds of gifts. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We cannot humanize the fact that the story was penned to have the eternal God, Who Himself knows no beginning nor is in need of one, choose to experience a beginning. That is genius in and of itself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is a bold act of emboldening sacrifice and the most selfless gift ever granted the rebellious lot that we are. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I while away my time wishing I were someone else when simply being me is the most magnificent thing I could ever wish to do. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thanksgiving is an attitude that must be rooted in the 'gift of life' if we ever hope to be thankful for the 'gifts' of life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If you think you can stand to know what you're made of, try kneeling before God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A lot of the situations that we put ourselves in are similar to a cat in a yard full of dogs. We rarely ask ourselves how we got here, (which doesn't help with the question of how we get out of here), all of which rarely keeps us from finding ourselves in the next yard asking the same questions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If my heart is set on pursuing real treasures, my mind must be fixed solely on the privilege of enjoying them and freed of the obsession of owning them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Peace is achieved when our conscience rests in the fact that we've engaged in 'right' living, verses believing that living is a 'right. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Have we ever thought to consider that the need to be loved grows because of its absence, but that love also grows because of its presence? And does this not speak to the power of love? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water's edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by me. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I've got to be sufficiently broken by life's many broken promises to be sufficiently compelled to seek out God's unbreakable promises. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If my decisions constantly heed the voice of the world, I can be completely assured that I'm going to end up in a 'world of hurt.' If my decisions heed the word of God, I can be completely assured that this 'world of hurt' won't be anywhere near my solar system. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The most critical time in any battle is not when I'm fatigued, it's when I no longer care. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The true sign of a robust and mature life rests in how many times that life has been knocked down, for to be incessantly knocked down and yet find oneself still standing means that someone had the resolve to get up that many times plus one. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
No, I am not powerful nor do I wish to be, for it is God using my weakness that makes me potent and I would never wish to surrender that. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My definition of success is not based on achieving the impossible, but rather surviving the probable. And with a threshold that horribly low, simple survival cannot help but become my highest aspiration. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If God has the answer to every question, maybe my appreciation for God should be shaped more by the number of questions and less by the wisdom of the answers. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A god of the 'possible' is no God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To dream only of what is 'possible' is to be fooled into believing that one is dreaming in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If your dream doesn't scare you, it's not big enough. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The voice incessantly quelled in the chorus of human voices will always be the voice of God. And given a reality of this magnitude, I would be well advised to cease my babbling and encourage those around me to do the same. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A nation aimlessly drifting away from God is a nation for which prayer is a rudder and praise is a sail. And it is the man or woman on their knees that builds the former and gives wind to the latter. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Let me be strong, for to be anything else is to languish in the abyss of compromise and to descend to places of impoverishment so destitute that they will squelch my soul and crush my heart. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God's love was designed to be inserted directly into the world's pain to work pain against itself for our good. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Any purpose will be entirely purposeless unless it completely exceeds my ability to achieve it for only then is there room for God, and without God purpose of even the most magnificent sort remains utterly and abjectly purposeless. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Instead of the weight that sinks us, consequences are often the life preserver that saves us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Intelligence without wisdom is nothing more than stupidity that looks smart. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We would prefer all gain and no loss in life, yet that would gain us nothing more than great loss. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often instead of taking a stand we try to take the shortest route directly out of wherever we've found ourselves standing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest prayers that I could ever utter come from the heart. And when I pray that way, I rarely need to open my mouth. Therefore, maybe I should think about talking less. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every advancing step I take toward my goal of comfort is yet another retreating step I take away from God's goal of the impossible. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why is it that we don't worry about a compass until we're lost in a wilderness of our own making? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Of course love is blind; it keeps me blind to myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The shortest short-term investment is to serve ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Betrayal dressed in love and trimmed with the facade of good intentions is the most barbaric of all betrayals. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There's something inherently majestic about Christmas that seems to have been abandoned by us; something flippantly cast aside, something that was foolishly abandoned and was tragically forgotten in the abandonment. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Consequences are not the spoiler that kills my dreams. Rather, they are the lessons that enhance my dreaming. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often our lives are soiled to desperation by endings that in reality are magnificently outnumbered by beginnings. And unless we become convinced that an ending is always the birthplace of a beginning that is on its way, we will live terribly soiled lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Where there is no hope, there is Christmas. And where there is no Christmas, there is no hope. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Mediocrity is the companion of passivity and will not heed the call of great things. Courage is the companion of sacrifice and cannot help but heed the call of great things. And we are left of our own accord to choose one or the other. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I have finally come to realize that it's being forced to be honest with myself that's made my pain painful all along. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Genius without wisdom is like a plane without wings; it will navigate the runway but it will never know the sky. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is when I am cold, alone, bitterly forlorn and shuttered from all hope that you will see who I truly am. And my goal is that at those most precarious of moments, what you will see is Jesus holding you through my tears. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The anticipation of loss is much more frightening than the actual loss as anticipation leaves room for the imagination to create that which, in all likelihood, will never transpire. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's not about some principled debate as to whether I should focus on what I have, or on what I don't have. Rather, it's about being thankful that I have the privilege to enjoy the former, and the opportunity to contemplate the latter. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To fall is not to fail. To fail is to never fall because I never got up in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thanksgiving is a posture of both mind and heart where we recognize how terribly fortunate we are, and how much we've been blessed despite the fact that we probably haven't been the blessing that we should have been. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often fantasy is not a rich elaboration of life designed to enhance our existence, rather it is our pell-mell escape from life with the intent of exiting this existence. And the most imaginative fantasy of all is to somehow think that I can do that in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am thankful that to be attuned to the needs of another attunes us to the world, and that if I stay attuned only to my needs I will always be a stranger to the world. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God's decision to reach out in such dramatic fashion as to lay all rightful privilege aside and be born into abject destitution tells us that His passion for us exceeds our desire for Him. And maybe we should commit to evening that up a bit. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A true work of art is shaped by the hands of another, and if in shaping us that 'other' is anything other than God, the piece will never touch the remotest periphery of its potential. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hate feeds on itself, while love will always find itself fed. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Pain dutifully reminds me that the world is terribly imperfect, but it faithfully helps me appreciate the world on those days when it's a little closer to being perfect. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Most of my failures can be ascribed to the fact that I chose that which was 'easy' over that which was 'right'. And while it's 'right' to admit this to myself, it isn't 'easy.' So, which choice am I going to make this time? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I must never equate the degree of pain as evidencing the incorrectness of a decision, for if I do I will default on some of the most critical decisions I should have ever made. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thankfulness is an attitude of possibilities, not an attitude of liabilities. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I see only my bias, I have surrendered to a single myopic lens through which to view the world. If I dare to surrender my bias, I will spend the rest of my life seeing the world and throwing away lenses. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too many of us view liberty as something that 'just is,' and too few see it as something that 'is' only because someone, somewhere was faced with the formidable reality that to keep liberty meant paying a stiff price. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I am so terribly limited as to view my handicaps as nothing more than lamentable limitations, then I have taken some of my greatest God-given assets and completely handicapped them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the word 'impossible' is itself impossible. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We will understand the depth of our vision when at some point we are finally faced with the price we must pay to achieve it. And when the price comes calling, most visions end up falling. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sadly, it seems that I have the proclivity to create plenty of devils, but most of the time I don't even go looking for angels. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas was about understanding that servanthood would win the hearts of men for eternity, where raw power might win them only for a moment, if at all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas was an ingenious plan designed by God to lay siege to the hearts of all men by submitting Himself to the greed of all men. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem with holiness is that once we look into the face of it we are no longer capable of taking that which is odious and filthy and somehow pretending that it's translucent and clean. In other words, we have to do one of the most revolting things possible; we have to face ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love is about investing in the best interest of another without regard to our own interest. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The very places that we presume God not to be are the very places that are filled with His footprints and littered with His fingerprints. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There is a deep dryness of the soul and all of the recalcitrant contrivances of man to quench his own thirst will bring not a single drop of moisture to those parched places, for God and God alone holds the water that satiates the soul. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Loss is an invitation to a journey of unparalleled growth, yet we seldom RSVP the invitation. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, a mountain before me is soon to be a memory behind me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We opt to be seen as 'right' in the eyes of everyone else, rather than doing what's 'right' in light of the situation. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There is that gnawing feeling that we are far more than what we believe ourselves to be. Maybe it's time to believe the gnawing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In case you're short on definitions, here's one. Insanity: 'Destroying the very things that sustain us.' And if we're so short-sighted so as to make such preposterous choices, then it's not all that preposterous to believe that shortly our end will be in sight. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We think that boxes take everything that's bad and they lock all that nasty stuff out, when in reality they take everything that we are and they lock all of those great things in. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am likely to fail if I have determined the cost as too high or my intelligence as too low. Yet, if I think about it, the real failure rests in believing either of these to be true. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The step that we are on is only a step to the next place, and no step regardless of how massive is ever a destination. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Raw power without Godly obedience is a long walk off a short conscience. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I pray that I am sufficiently stirred by the rumor of great things to seek the God who created this single thread that I am, and to marvel at a vision magnificent enough to cause this God to weave from this single thread a tapestry most resplendent. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Faith is the resplendent key that liberates me from the impregnable confines meticulously constructed from the raw material of my disbelief. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Abundance is grasped by infusing our souls with the intoxicatingly liberating fact that life is a privilege, not a right. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Apathy is unconditional surrender where we are driven into hiding by unrealistic fear, and firmly held there by the misinformed belief that we are helpless to do anything other than hide. Therefore, apathy survives solely on lies and can be completely abated by truth. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I've really been doing is running? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I had a single wish, I would wish sixty seconds of total depravity upon myself. For one of the greatest gifts of all is to have 'nothing' so that I can finally learn how to appreciate 'everything'. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is God deciding to become what He never had been, so that we can become what we never could be. And so, God does the most improbable thing imaginable. He orchestrates His own birth. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can amass countless fortunes and yet stand with empty hands. I can seek God and have fortunes that fill countless hands. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Is the goal I've set been determined by a desire to avoid the goal I should have set? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There are often two sets of goals in life: those that we establish, and those that really matter. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My decisions determine my destination long before I ever get there. And once I do get there, I suddenly realize this is not the destination I had in mind because what I had in mind was the fantasy that my denial had created verses the reality my choices crafted. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To embrace an attitude of humility is to free myself from myself. And that is likely the great liberation of all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe the truth of it all is that we're just too fearful to give our faith enough running room to realize that this precariously thin path that led us to the end of this life is dwarfed to obscurity by the infinitely vast byway that begins immediately on the other side. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's not a lack of opportunity around me. Rather, it's a lack of faith within me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe it's an issue of being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things, rather than seeing ourselves as being exiled to some distant side line of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that's far too far away to touch. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We live with this tortured feeling that we must create that which in reality we have the privilege of finding. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Commitment is a promise to a cause. Being non-committal is a promise to catastrophe. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Men can dig wells, but they can't create water. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When will I realize that without God my world is draped in shadows between which there is not a single ray of light? And when will I recognize that with God, my world is deluged in light between which there is not a single thread of darkness? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have forfeited our calling for the simple reason that we've ignored the God who says that the 'possible' is never bound by the 'probable,' and instead we've dutifully heeded the god of fear that incessantly says the 'possible' is anything but 'probable. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The hand of God is wonderfully evident at those times when He pens stories whose lines we ourselves are far too fearful to pen or whose imaginations are far too limited to envision. And I would unashamedly suggest that the Christmas story is that very story. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Denial is fear gone delusional. Acceptance is fear given to God. Engaging is fear overruled by God. Victory is fear banished by God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I constantly pack my pockets full of worthless trinkets, and in such misguided gorging I leave my heart empty and my soul emaciated because I have forgotten everything but trinkets. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We want to 'write in' our plan and 'write out' the consequence. When we do that, we're headed 'right back' to what we foolishly thought we could 'write out. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Real blindness is the absence of the knowledge that one is blind. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There are precious lessons deep in the stench of failure and the filth of selfish choices. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I don't have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter says that every ending ever experienced by man is exquisitely crafted to find its own ending at the feet of a fresh beginning. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is God throwing everything at death so that I can give everything to life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I too often allow people to become a sterile commodity to be bartered in the service of my greed, and in doing something so absurdly reckless I foolishly barter away everything that meets my need. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I give with the motive to get, regardless of the degree to which that motive besets me, I will walk away impoverished and I will leave those to whom I have given just as impoverished as I have now found myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To calculate sacrifice is to attempt to sacrifice safely, and safe sacrifice is one of the most outrageous oxymoron's I can think of. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Making oneself large involves intentionally making oneself small. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would like to say that I'm sacrificial. But am I sacrificial enough to acknowledge the fact that I'm not? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If it has anything to do with me, it has nothing to do with sacrifice. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sacrifice is a noun in my vocabulary that should be a verb in my life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To 'live' is to realize that without the journey the destination is nothing more than a task rigorously completed rather than an experience riotously lived. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It would be wise to define 'living' as walking in the fullest expression of who I am, verses wallowing in the confines of who I'm not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although we may face untold numbers that by their sheer mass appear to render us as little more than a speck in the face of them, a single person standing with God amidst any mass will always be an indomitable majority. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Tragedy cleans the windows of the soul by washing away the bias of our lives in the detergent of pain. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is not that you give birth to a child that matters most. Rather, it is what you birth into them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The barrier to our future is often the very plans that we've created to get there. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would be dreadfully remiss not to think that God would painstakingly craft something an intimately ingenious and inexplicably intricate as my life, and that by virtue of such sheer brilliance I should not examine it with the greatest precision and unleash it with the fullest abandon. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To keep my life free of evil I must of necessity keep my life full of God, for keeping my life full of anything else will give evil everything else. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our imagination is God's ingenious gift that hands us the privilege of romping and playing in realities that we can't see only because we've yet to create them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am what no one else is, and in the hands of God I can do what no one else does. And if I dare set such a truth in motion I will change my world. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I had any hand in it at all there's a chance that it might be beautiful, but it simply cannot not be majestic. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Uncommon solutions can always overcome problems of the most common or uncommon kind if I am sufficiently committed to overcoming them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Often we don't see the majesty of God's design because we're caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can expend my life caught in the allure of a million places devised by man. Or, I can realize that being caught in the majesty of an eternal God is infinitely greater than being caught in a million places that will die a million deaths. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Darkness should never be an excuse to quit, for with God, darkness is the exact stuff that light was built for. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we've somehow become convinced that the script we followed 'yesterday' can't be edited, it will be incredibly difficult to tell the difference between 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow'. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A consequence may be the very thing that saves us because it was the only thing loud enough to get our attention. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I regularly convince myself otherwise, because I aim at something doesn't necessarily mean I have a target. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every tomorrow is an outcome of what I do today, and the beauty of it all is that today is happening all the time. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The 'fact' of my actions frequently collide with the 'fiction' of my words. And at what point will I live what I say, so I will avoid what I do? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The legacy I leave will be unimaginably enhanced by the legacies I received. Therefore, I must be wise enough to embrace the history of those who have gone before me so that I can shape the future of those who will go ahead of me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest loss lies in our inability to accept loss. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Independence that has declared its 'independence' from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Forgiving others simply means that you refuse to be a prisoner of a past that you can't change, and shackled to decisions that you didn't make. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe we need to reflect on the fact that the patience of God always outruns the impatience of our greed, and that His love always outweighs the greed that outweighs our love for Him. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We've yet to comprehend the impervious reality that to gain 'life' we have to do the most scandalous thing imaginable, and that is to work 'against' the whole of our humanity and give everything away. And yet to give everything away is to work 'with' the whole of God's character. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is no secret that the greatest treasures are found in the most remote, inaccessible and difficult places where we must pursue them with great energy and even greater risk. It's the same with our lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I find that I spend a tremendous amount of time chasing the praises of men rather than sitting with the praises of God. The former is something I attempt to catch, the latter catches me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Why is it when I pursue the praises of men I find myself with everything that I've looked for but nothing that I need? That's because I have an extraordinary habit of looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Far too often we've let humanity become a commodity that serves us along the way, rather than an asset that enriches our journey. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To live safely within the realm of possibility is to know nothing other than that which is possible. To live boldly within the realm of God is to experience everything that's impossible. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our experiences are the building blocks of the future hewn out of the granite of the present. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If it's about me, I can be assured that there will be a bunch of empty chairs in the auditorium of my life; save the one I'm sitting in. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Five of the most dangerous words I know: 'What's in it for me? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
As utterly irrational as it might seem, the greed within me has the most limited vision I can possibly imagine as it has eyes only for the few things it doesn't have, and it is completely blind to all the many remarkable things that it does. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Greed is the fast-track to poverty. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love in the service of self is greed in disguise. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Choosing a life of safety is safely choosing something other than life. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we are merely a chance product of 'random happenstance' and nothing more, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that we have the ability to contemplate the question of 'random happenstance' with such methodical complexity? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In the absence of faith, our dreams will move from feasible aspirations to implausible fantasy. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The hallmark of great dreams is not their possibility but their impossibility, and the fact that it is the very notion of the 'impossible' that inspires us to go and accomplish them anyway. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We haven't quite learned yet that pulling the trigger prematurely may pull everything right down on our heads. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I get up just one less time than the number of times I've been knocked down, I have done one of the most devastating things possible; I have halted my life at that very spot. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Loss is the uninvited door that extends us an unexpected invitation to unimaginable possibilities. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Apathy is giving up when we need to get up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Surrendering is intentionally laying down the power I possess. And have I considered that the power I lay down is often more powerful than that which I'm laying it down in front of? Therefore, I would be wise to recognize that surrender is less the absence of power and more the presence of fear. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sadly, in too many cases surrender is having been 'outrun' by fear rather than having 'run out' of heart. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To avoid the cost incurred in pursuing great things we opt for ease and blithely abandon great things. The sheer recklessness of such a pathetically apathetic trade-off will eventually cost us a life squandered, which in the end is the greatest cost of all. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
By choosing comfort we are in the very same decision choosing to miss every great thing in life, and that thought should be anything but comforting. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe it's time to realize that our greatest contributions are not the monuments that we construct, but the lives that we change because we took the time to add to the monument which is them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I worship the fact that I don't worship anything, amongst other things what I'm worshipping is denial. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Life is not about getting everything right, as much as it's about working to live right. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To enjoy beauty in the company of myself is to experience beauty bound by the limits of the sole person that I am. But, to experience beauty in the company of God is to experience beauty bound by the limits of Who God is, which is to experience beauty without limits. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The eyes of love have 20/20 vision when focused on another, and become entirely blind when focused on ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am always trying to figure God out so that I can figure Him in. But after a while I figure that I should just let God be God, and figure that He'll figure it all out anyway. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It seems that our humanity inadvertently smears various lines as it touches the prose of the divine. And when that happens we end up with a humanized god that is God incessantly diluted by our handling of the script. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In life, the greater the principle, the less people there are who will follow it. The higher the calling, the fewer the followers. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sometimes things that appear completely irreconcilable and mutually exclusive serve a shared purpose that could not be achieved except through their contradiction. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I'm seldom aware enough to see it, the greater cost regarding that which I possess was not what I paid for it, but what someone along the way sacrificed so that I might have the opportunity to pay for it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is the invulnerable tale of utter selflessness where at an inestimable cost God did for us what He did not need done for Himself. And that kind of 'doing' happens every day. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest dividends in life are those that we give away. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Contrary to popular opinion, we are all a vast brotherhood of human beings whose very survival hinges not on what we keep, but on what we give. And it is in the giving that we not only survive to live another day, but we thrive to celebrate another day. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We retaliate instead of reflect, and we burn hot in the flames of revenge rather than cool our heels in the pool of patience. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sometimes chaos is the very thing that deliberately shakes up our neatly ordered world's in order to get us out of the neatly ordered ruts that have kept us stuck. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love that is fueled solely by feelings will suddenly find itself out of gas on a long road with no gas stations. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The burdens I carry on my back are in direct correlation to the weight of my ego. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thanksgiving is coming to the life-altering understanding that truly precious things can't be owned anyway. And the wonder of it all is not only realizing that we can't own them, but it's realizing that we don't have to expend the energy in the maintenance of them in order to enjoy them. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
And who would dare write their own death into the script so that the rest of the characters in the tale might live? God of course. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God has given me both the right and privilege to outrun Him if I so choose. Yet, if I do so, I will have lost the race. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I fear that should I seek out the treasures around me, they might by comparison reveal that I have not cultivated the treasures within me. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If safety is my goal, living life is not. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The worst thing that I can do is humanize God. The second worst thing that I can do is deify myself. And the best thing that I can do is to avoid both. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It wasn't until I slowed the car and rolled down the windows that I realized I spend most of my days driving 'through' life without driving 'in' life. So, I've decided to walk because the pace is slower and the windows are always down. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I'm looking for the utterly impossible combination of a God who is sovereign beyond my wildest comprehension, but who is completely comprehensible at the same incomprehensible time. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We incessantly vacillate between what's behind us and what's before us depending on the current barometer of our courage and the ambivalent nature of our vision. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
And so to tame Christmas we spin myths to temper the story, we create our own caricatures to speak our own lines into the script, we gift ourselves to enhance an adventure now lagging, and we think we're on a grand adventure when we've completely forgotten what an adventure is. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear is my mind painstakingly creating the worse-case scenario and then putting it on steroids. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
An idea without sacrifice, regardless of grand it might be, will never be anything more than an idea. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would suggest that our imagination is a tiny shard of God's infinite genius that we have within us simply because we were created in God's image. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I huddle in the dark with a mass of burnt matches strewn at my feet. And yet, for all of those matches I've not been able to light a single candle. And huddled in such deep darkness, I've somehow yet to realize that Christmas made both matches and candles forever obsolete. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God's genius is as wide as the cosmos, while by comparison our intelligence can find room on the head of a pin. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Loving those who hate us means wantonly setting the stage and orchestrating the situation in a way that's sure to result in a production of great personal calamity. But to not love them is an even greater calamity. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter what befalls us in life, we can take the charred remnants and we can reconstruct a life unimaginably richer than that from which the shards and pieces fell. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I ruthlessly expend my time and my energies seeking many random things, none of which will bless me in the way that I suppose they will, for despite my frequently stubborn resistance to the thought, the single and sole blessing that I can be utterly confident in is found in seeking God alone. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Authorship of anything apart from God is nothing more than a tragedy in the making. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have the power of the pen to write the next chapter, and the privilege to author the page in whatever fashion we choose. Yet, seldom do we understand the power of the pen and the privilege of the page. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are living out the drama of a pathetic story whose pages are smeared with our own handwriting. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greatest gains that we will ever experience arise from the greatest sacrifices that we have ever known. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is not a story birthed of a humanized god for it simply doesn't fit into the rubric of such an emaciated plot. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What in the world would ever lead to me believe that life is a series of opportunities that are readily available to everyone else but me? What really leads me to believe such an atrocious lie is that I don't believe in myself sufficiently to engage those opportunities in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Being our best involves walking away from every situation with less than what we had when we encountered it because we left something behind in the exchange. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
There's something tightly woven throughout the fabric of our humanity that runs entirely opposite to the baser instinct of looking out for our own good. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The wisdom to be on the throne of one's life must surpass the wisdom of the one being ruled, otherwise I will squander the whole of my life in the most appalling ways. By virtue of that reality, I would be wise to get out of the chair and invite God to have a seat. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We recklessly attempt to disguise our 'greed' by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as 'rights' and 'privileges.' Yet, if we dare dress 'greed' in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's not that I can't remember. It's that I prefer not to remember, which means that I prefer not to remember what not remembering did to me the last time I did it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
More often than not, rejecting rescue is in reality rejecting our need to be rescued. And it may very well be that is why so many reject Christmas. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
After digging a thousand wells of my own and stumbling upon a thousand others dug by the hands of thirsty men, I have yet to realize that the only well that can satiate every thirst is the one that men will never dig. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would much prefer to enlarge your life by giving you the gift of my life, rather than gifting your life to material obesity with frivolous trinkets. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The issue is becoming so absorbed in positioning ourselves ahead of everyone else that life becomes nothing more than an endless strategy. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas is everything that God would do, and nothing that we would imagine Him doing. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I would rather have the favor of God than the blessing of a million men, for the favor of God takes the work of my hands and leaves a million men utterly astonished at the greatness of the feat. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our insecurities cause us to retaliate in outrageously greater proportions to whatever it was that came at us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Whatever the item is that I have chosen to give you, it is nothing more than the receptacle within which I have placed the whole of myself. If it is empty, it is not a gift. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
We want a god alright, but we humanize him enough to force him to be at our beck-and-call verses responding to the utter magnificence of His call. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Christmas embodies everything that I need. However, everything that I need is often made up of a lot of stuff I don't want. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
My wisdom absent of God's wisdom is nothing more than a best-guess. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives 'declining'. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To blithely discard the spent kernels of something that has ended is to discard the very resources that have painstakingly been harvested from that ending from which a spirited new beginning will be cultivated. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
What we're searching for will determine where we arrive, or if we arrive. And right in the middle of such risky choices, Christmas is God perfectly solving the problem by showing us what to search for and then bringing it to us. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The ledger of my life can lean heavy with a prolific array of stellar investments, yet in the tallying I would be wise to remember that an investment that is not of God will leave a zero balance on the ledger of my life no matter how many different ways I try to add it up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Mediocrity is what's left when vision is absent. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Am I a storm-waster? For it is within the fury of the very storms within which I cower that I find resources for my growth that are entirely absent on calmer days. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To live a lie may allow us to avoid the truth, but the real lie lays in believing that we can avoid the truth in the first place. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite my best effort to make myself as large as absolutely possible, life will always be larger than me. That simple fact makes God not only a likelihood, but a necessity. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Intelligence and wisdom are certainly compatible, however they are rarely seen in each other's company. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the pursuit of perfection is a way to prove our worth, in the end the pursuit will only prove our imperfections. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To be blessed and yet permit gluttony to blind me to the blessings is to banish myself to a life of unrelenting poverty even though I might be utterly engulfed in the embrace of a million marvelous blessings. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Because thankfulness is the tonic that always cures the cancers of greed, envy and jealously, it should be taken in liberal doses daily. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I cannot create greatness as I can only create weak facsimiles. And in sorting through the innumerable facsimiles around me, I will only happen upon true greatness when I happen upon the true God. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I must know something in order to believe in it, what I am able to believe in will be severely limited. If I choose to believe in something in order to know it, then what I believe in can be boundless. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The world screams, 'Stay down, it's safer.' My soul screams, 'So is being dead. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Humility is the greatest shaper of souls and crafter of character, for it wipes away all the grandiose things that we spend so much of our lives pretending to be, so that we can spend all of our lives being the exceptional person that we were actually created to be. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
I spend my life constantly calling in 'imaginary' debts that aren't owed to me in order to avoid the 'real' debts that I owe to others, and so everybody ends up bankrupt. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every action is something temporary that gets carved into something permanent. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the fear of failure is slain cold by success that is already hot on the way. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
To fall down is to face the weakness of my humanity, test the mettle of my character, and push the limits of my strength. Therefore, falling down will tell me who I am far more clearly than most things I might learn when I'm standing up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Surrender is a choice, it is never a calling. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The more we construct lives that prioritize safety, the bigger the prison we construct around ourselves. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Everything I touch makes me a little bit more like the thing I'm touching, so I'd better start paying attention to what I'm touching. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Love is a perpetual journey that is extraordinary because it will never find itself terminated by a destination. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sheet of life's music runs in front of us in endless reams, but without the ears that God grants us they don't seem to spawn a single sound. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Contradictions are the impossible chasms that create forever separations. God is the forever bridge that creates impossible reunions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Greatness untethered from God results in calamity unrestrained by men. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Prayer is one action where I lay aside my abilities to immerse myself wholly in God's capabilities. And the liberation found in such an action is less about being engaged with God and more about being freed from myself. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
For once in my life maybe I ought to actually think about taking God at His word, and in doing so to suddenly find myself riotously welcoming the rather shocking reality that Christmas is truly everything that He says it is. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
In too many instances we have settled for a world of our own shaping that is shaping up to be in terrible shape. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Jesus came to give us life so unimaginably beyond anything that we could ever hope to conceptualize that wonder cannot help but be our constant companion. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often my solution is to let something die because I can't keep it alive, when God's solution is to let something live because His Son already died for it. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
The only thing I have to wait for to change my life is my attitude. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
A commitment to never getting knocked down is in reality a decision to never stand up. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
When we surrender to apathy and expect the world to deliver everything to us, we deliver ourselves to a slow death and we sacrifice the best of our potential to the worst of our decisions. -- Craig D. Lounsbrough
Can anything be called an achievement if it does not simultaneously enhance the life of someone other than the one who has done the achieving? -- Craig D. Lounsbrough