Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

by Wayne Cordeiro

Suffering will change us, but not necessarily for the better. We have to choose that. And it was the choosing that made all the difference for me.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” MAY SARTON

Wisdom and understanding are not built in a day; however they are built daily.

“Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

“Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in His beauty deigns to walk.” CHARLES H. SPURGEON

We won’t be held accountable for how much we have done, but for how much we have done of what He has asked us to do.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is not. You see, pain is a result of loving deeply and living fully. Misery, on the other hand, is a result of living without reflecting and trying to forge our future without insight.

Faith is living in advance what we will only understand in reverse.

“What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.” J. SIDLOW BAXTER

You may never become all that you dream of, but you’ll never achieve anything that you don’t dream of.

Your day does not begin when you get up. It starts when you go to sleep. Rest begins your new day,

Friendships are not made in the blur of life. They are made in the margins.

“A friend is one to whom you can pour out the contents of your heart, chaff and grain alike, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

We have learned to rest when the work is done. But the fact of the matter is that the work will never be done. There will always be more to do. So the Sabbath rest becomes a command we respond to, not a result of nothing left to do.

Potential is everything you can be but haven’t become yet. It is everything you can do but haven’t done yet. It’s everywhere you can go but haven’t gone yet. Potential is the books you can write that you haven’t written yet. It is the life you’ve wanted to live but haven’t lived yet. It is like a huge engine—running idle. It is energy still underutilized, power yet unleashed, and strength yet unused.