Brian Combs > Brian's Quotes

“Until I began to see my depression as a constant reminder that I needed to stay close to God, it was simply an annoying pain that plagued me daily. My first step toward rehabilitation was to see my depression as a positive challenge that drew me closer to Christ on a daily basis.”
― Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

“Thus says the Lord:
‘Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is,
And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls.’” JEREMIAH 6:16 NKJV”
― Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

“A leader’s role is not to maintain. It is to gain altitude!”
― Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

“Only I can give myself permission to rest or to overachieve, to pace myself or to run at the pace others expect of me.”
― Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

“As freedoms slip away and suffering draws near, we must not be known as an exasperated people always ready to give an answer for our protest and grievance”
― Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission As Strangers In Our Own Land

“And we must not be a people always longing for the past—for the glory days—but as those looking to a certain and truly glorious future. Then we’ll have opportunities to reason with others about the hope we possess.”
― Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission As Strangers In Our Own Land

“So it is with us. We may be strangers and sojourners, in uncomfortable or less-than-desirable conditions. We may have had our rights and privileges stripped away from us. We may have neither the community nor the personal comfort we want. We may have been forced into unpleasant situations or relationships we’d never choose. But what if God’s providential hand has put us right where we are with a specific purpose—to bring about the salvation of his own?”
― Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission As Strangers In Our Own Land

“For many of us, when it comes to personal evangelism, comfort has usurped our calling.”
― Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission As Strangers In Our Own Land

“Let your fears drive you to God. The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people.”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“A. W. Tozer, who said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“What if rather than avoiding brokenness we embraced it? Welcomed it? And even prayed for it? “God, break me.”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. —psalm 139:23–24”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“When you cry out to God for forgiveness, he doesn’t remember your sins. They are gone. Forgiven. Washed away. And forgotten. In the same way that the coal removed Isaiah’s guilt and sin, the blood of Jesus takes away ours.”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“When you start to avoid what hurts you, what happens? Over time, your spiritual side grows stronger. And your selfish side starts to die.”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity, and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas, where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizon of our hopes; and to push back the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. This we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. Amen!*”
― Craig Groeschel, Dangerous Prayers: Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Be Safe

“Prayer is “Finding Our Way through Duty to Delight.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances.”
― Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule—it is a failure to treat God as God. It is a sin against his glory. “Far be it from me,” said the prophet Samuel to his people, “that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Sam 12:23 [italics mine]).”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“The Bible speaks of our relationship with God as knowing and being known (Gal 4:9; 1 Cor 13:”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“The lesson here is not that God never guides our thoughts or prompts us to choose wise courses of action, but that we cannot be sure he is speaking to us unless we read it in the Scripture.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“To be adopted means that now God loves us as if we had done all Jesus had done.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“When we grasp his astonishing, costly sacrifice for us, transfer our trust and hopes from other things to Christ, and ask for God’s acceptance and grace for Christ’s sake, we begin to realize with the Spirit’s help the magnitude of our benefits and blessings in Christ. Then we begin to want almost desperately to know and love God for himself. His love and regard make popularity and worldly status look pale and thin. Being delighted in him and delighting him become inherently fulfilling and beautiful.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“you don’t truly know God until the knowledge of what he has done for you in Jesus Christ has changed the fundamental structure of your heart.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“To the degree you can shed the “unreality” of self-sufficiency, to that degree your prayer life will become richer and deeper.”
― Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“In order to form a habit of communing with God continually and committing everything we do to Him, we must at first make a special effort. After a while we find that His love inwardly inspires us to do all things for Him effortlessly.”
― Marshall Davis, The Practice of the Presence of God In Modern English

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my j rock and my k redeemer.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: English Standard Version

“The trust we put in God honors Him greatly and draws down great blessings.”
― Marshall Davis, The Practice of the Presence of God In Modern English

“Our sanctification does not depend upon changing what we do, but in doing for God’s sake what we normally do for our own sake. It is sad to see how many people mistake the means for the end, addicting themselves to religious works, which they perform very imperfectly because of their human or selfish motives. The most excellent method he had found of going to God was to do our normal activities without any view of pleasing men, and (as far as we are able) purely for the love of God.”
― Marshall Davis, The Practice of the Presence of God In Modern English