set goals

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.
-Bill Copeland

plan and act!

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
- General George Patton

personal development

Reading makes a full man;
conference a ready man;
writing an exact man.
- Bacon

(and the holy spirit a new man!)

Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.

Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.

- Fortune cookie

only two kinds of people in the world

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous, who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners who believe themselves righteous.

Pascal

don't try to get god on your side

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God's side.

Lincoln's call to fasting and humility

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

- Abraham Lincoln

we are too sensual and earthly... immediately terrified when hungry!

“Let the doctrine which proceeds from thy mouth be sound. For he expressly uses this word, because it is the means of upholding us in true integrity, that the word of God, which is preached to us, be our spiritual pasture. This will not be perceived at first sight, but such is the fact. And why do we not perceive it? Because we are too sensual and earthly. For when we are in want of food for our body, we are immediately terrified, we become alarmed, we have not a moment of repose, for it touches us nearly. We are sensitive as to this fading life, but we are insensible to all that affects our souls; there is such brutal stupidity that we do not know our wants, though they press heavily upon us. Yet let it be observed that there is nothing but weakness in us, if we are not fed with the doctrine of God. And that is the reason why it is called ‘sound,’ for in this consists the health of our souls. As our bodies are kept in their proper condition by well-regulated nourishment, so our souls are supported by that doctrine which serves not only for nourishment but for medicine. For we are full of vices which are worse than diseases; and therefore our soul must be purged, and we must be healed of them. The method of doing this is, that we profit by the word of God. And so it is not without good reason that Paul gives to it this designation, that it is ‘sound,’ or that it is ‘wholesome.’” — Fr. Ser.

Footnote from ET of Calvin’s commentary on Titus 2:1

“Fr. Ser.” = French Sermon?