Rev. Dr. Micah > Rev. Dr. Micah's Quotes

“God not only chose you but also knows everything about you—and still sticks around. He knows your sins, your wicked thoughts, and your deceitful heart. He knows you intimately and loves you passionately.”
― Jerrad Lopes, Dad Tired and Loving It: Stumbling Your Way to Spiritual Leadership

“The greatest gift you can give your children is Jesus. And the best way to point them toward Jesus is by loving your wife like Jesus loves the church.”
― Jerrad Lopes, Dad Tired and Loving It: Stumbling Your Way to Spiritual Leadership

“As men, our job is to become lead learners of the kingdom of God. We should be the first in our families to initiate and explore what it means to fall in love with Jesus and follow in his ways.”
― Jerrad Lopes, Dad Tired and Loving It: Stumbling Your Way to Spiritual Leadership

“Our frantic pursuit of understanding everything from the cellular to the cosmic has dulled our awe and muted our imagination by offering us a false sense of control over the created order.”
― Zac M. Hicks, The Worship Pastor: A Call to Ministry for Worship Leaders and Teams

“Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life. You also know my reluctance to let you have your way with me in these areas. Hear the deeper cry of my heart for wholeness and by your grace enable me to be open to your transforming presence in this reading. Lord, have mercy.”
― M. Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation

“the process of spiritual shaping is a primal reality of human existence. Everyone is in a process of spiritual formation! Every thought we hold, every decision we make, every action we take, every emotion we allow to shape our behavior, every response we make to the world around us, every relationship we enter into, every reaction we have toward the things that surround us and impinge upon our lives—all of these things, little by little, are shaping us into some kind of being.”
― M. Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation

“When we continue to offer the discipline, that discipline becomes a means of grace God works through and moves to transform that dead portion of our body into life in the image of Christ. One morning you wake up and discover, often to your amazement, that the discipline is no longer a discipline; it is now the natural outflow of a being that has been raised to new life in Christ—that the Spirit of the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, the Spirit who also dwells in you, has made alive your dead body also. You did not do it. God did it. But God did it through the discipline you offered.”
― M. Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation

“Without a holistic corporate spirituality, there is a powerful tendency to become heterodox or heretical. Corporate spirituality is essential, because privatization always fashions a spirituality that in some way allows us to maintain control of God. Without brothers and sisters to call us to accountability, we will work powerfully to maintain that control.”
― M. Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation

“I must ruthlessly refuse to compare my talents with anyone else. Comparison will lead to pride and a false sense of superiority if I’m ahead of someone, and misery if I’m behind. Or worse, I will discount and bury the irreplaceable treasure that the Lord of the Gift has given to me alone.”
― John Ortberg Jr., If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

“One of the most sobering aspects of the story is that the servant is judged, not for doing bad things, but for doing nothing. He didn’t steal or embezzle or defraud. He merely buried his gift.”
― John Ortberg Jr., If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

“Fear has created more practicing heretics than bad theology ever has, for it makes us live as though we serve a limited, finite, partially present, semi-competent God.”
― John Ortberg Jr., If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

“For good reasons, God does not always move at our frantic pace. We are too often double espresso followers of a decaf Sovereign.”
― John Ortberg Jr., If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

“Now, in worship I use every tool at my disposal—memory, imagination, music, Scripture, images, pictures, and dance—to magnify God in my life. In worship I declare that God is real. In worship my perception of reality is changed and sharpened. In worship I remember that reality is more than what I can see and touch. In worship I acknowledge that I look at a shrunken God on a regular basis, looking at him through the wrong end of the telescope. So in worship, at its heart, we magnify God. One of the Greek words for worship begins with the prefix mega, meaning large, which gets attached in our day to everything from malls to churches. In worship I remember again that we worship the great God, the Mega God, the Lord of lords. In one of the classic songs of worship in the New Testament, Mary cries out, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Worship enlarges my capacity to experience and understand God.”
― John Ortberg Jr., If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

“When the psalm sings instead of the singer, When the script preaches instead of the preacher, When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk, When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their overalls, When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince, When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter, When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions, I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition

“Confronted with so much choice, it’s tempting to just do your job. To pretend that it’s up to someone else, and to put your head down and follow instructions. Don’t surrender your agency and revert to the numbing day-to-day grind of compliance. You can make things better.”
― Seth Godin, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans

“Strategy is the soil, the seed, and the gardener working together over time. Strategy is our chance to make an impact.”
― Seth Godin, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans

“The ancients believed art arrived from elsewhere. They believed the artist’s task was not to invent, but to listen. They called it genius. They called it a muse. It was never something that belonged fully to you. It was simply something you hosted . That understanding really takes the pressure off. Creation stops being a performance and becomes hospitality. My responsibility, then, is not to be great. Just hospitable. To make a place tranquil enough to listen, and quiet enough to hear. To treat creativity as a sacred guest.”
― Bryan Austin, Paper Stars: poetry for life, and longing

“And then You came like a wildfire clearing the brush and ruins from my life. All those things I do not need. All those thoughts that do not serve me. You burned me clean. Now new shoots spring. Things take root and through Your love? A forest is born in me.”
― Bryan Austin, Paper Stars: poetry for life, and longing

“The seeds you plant today won’t grow for weeks or months. The systems we support, the people we dance with, the ruckus we create—it’s not for today, it’s for tomorrow. We’re here, now, but we live in the future. We are making history.”
― Seth Godin, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans