Michael Jordan - Success is depdent on your willingness to fail.

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan

Narrowness

"If you read one perspective on a subject you are naive, rigid and overconfident. If you read two perspectives you are confused and cynical. If you read 5 or 6 perspectives you start to find your own voice and you have cretive ideas. It is cruicial not to be locked into one perspective only reading those who confirm your views." Dr Tim Keller

Belief

"Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God along time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care. I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway?" Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz p.103

On the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

‘I would like to speak to you this morning about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Now as good reformed evangelicals, you will say to me: “The baptism of the Holy Spirit – we go it all at conversion.” Well, there is only one thing I have to say then. If you got it all at conversion; where in Christ’s name is it?’

Dr. Martyn Lloydd Jones: preaching to his congregation at All Souls Langham Place, late in his ministry.

On the danger of passivity

"The only thing that will perpetuate evil is for good people to do nothing"

Edmund Berk

Maybe not entirely true but profoundly challenging!

On turning your pleasure into adoration

"It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory...I have tried since...to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different...Gratitude exclaims, very properly, "How good of God to give me this." Adoration says, "What must be the quality of that being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!" One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun...If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour."

CS Lewis quoted in John Piper, When I don't desire God, How to Fight for Joy
ISBN 1-904774-01-6

On Deisre and Joy

"I don't know if I have ever tasted this kind of desire. Christiainity was never presented to me like this. I never knew that the desire for God and delight in God were crucial. I was always told that feelings didn't matter. Now I am finding evidence evidence all over the bible that the pursuit of joy in God, and the awakening of all kinds of spiritual affections, are part of the essence of the newborn Christian heart. This discovery excites me and frightens me. I want this. But I fear I don't have it. In fact, as far as I can see, it is outside my power to obtain. How do you get desire that you don't have and you can't create? Or how do you turn the spark into a flame so you can be sure it is pure fire?"

"How can I obtain or recover a joy in Christ that is so deep and strong that it will free me from bondage to western comforts and security, and will impel me into sacrifices of mercy and missions, and will sustain me in the face of martyrdom?"

John Piper, When I don't desire God, Fighting for Joy
ISBM 1-904774-01-6

On being a man after God's own heart

"The first quality God saw in David was spirituality. "The Lord has sought out ... a man after His own heart". What does it mean to be a man after God's own heart? Seems to me , it means you are a person whose life is in harmony with the Lord. What is important to him is important to you. What burdens him burdens you. When he says, "Go to the right," you go to the right . When he says, "stop that in your life," you stop it. When he says, "this is wrong and I want you to change it," you come to terms with it because you have a heart for God. That's bottom line Christianity.

"When you are deeply spiritual, you have a heart that is sensitive to the things of God."

Charles Swindoll, David
(ISBN: 0-8499-1382-9)