Ordering Your Private World Quotes

“when the inner garden is under cultivation and God's Spirit is present, harvests are regular events. The fruits? Things like courage, hope, love, endurance, joy, and lots of peace.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We must learn to soundproof the heart against the intruding noises of the public world in order to hear what God has to say.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We particularly need to listen to older people and children. They all have stories to tell that enrich the mind and the heart. Children simplify things, often with brutal honesty. Older people bring the perspective of their long years on issues. Suffering people also help us understand what are the truly important matters of life. There is something to learn from all people if we are only willing to sit at their feet and humble ourselves enough to ask the right questions.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“People whose minds are not strengthened for endurance are by no means always unintelligent. They simply have never stopped to think that the use of the mind for the purpose of growth is a necessary part of a God-pleasing lifestyle.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“It was a commitment to God. He was first on the calendar that day where He belongs every day. And it is not the sort of commitment one compromises. Not if one wants to seize time and keep it under control. It is the start of an organized day, an organized life, and an organized private world.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“A public man, though he is necessarily available at many times, must learn to hide. If he is always available, he is not worth enough when he is available.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Few of us can fully appreciate the terrible con­spiracy of noise there is about us, noise that denies us the silence and solitude we need for this culti­vation of the inner garden. It would not be hard to believe that the archenemy of God has conspired to surround us at every conceivable point in our lives with the interfering noises of civilization that, when left unmuffled, usually drown out the voice of God. He who walks with God will tell you plainly, God does not ordinarily shout to make Himself heard. As Elijah discovered, God tends to whisper in the garden.

Ordering Your Private World, pg. 126”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“The man or woman who learns to make peace with routine responsibilities and obligations will make the greatest contributions in the long run.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“There are too many people claiming to be followers of Christ who lost sight of their own sinfulness years ago. If they attend worship on Sunday, they leave without ever having had the experience of brokenness and repentance before God that indicates true worship. This leads to substandard Christianity.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Occasionally we hear the story of an organizational leader who, having given powerful leadership to an institution, comes toward the end of his working life and keeps holding on to leadership long after he should have let it pass into the hands of someone in a younger generation. Or he ensures that the leadership passes into the hands of a son or a daughter so that he can maintain his influence.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Since we have not understood that rest is a necessity, we have perverted its meaning, substituting for the rest that God first demonstrated things called leisure or amusement. These do not bring any order at all to the private world. Leisure and amusement may be enjoyable, but they are to the private world of the individual like cotton candy to the digestive system. They provide a momentary lift, but they will not last.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“People who would never touch a drop of alcohol can be among the most serious work addicts.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Poor fellow, he never schools his mind by a cessation from political ruminations, the most blinding, hardening and souring of all others.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Keep me, O Lord, from waxing mentally and spiritually dull and stupid. Help me to keep the physical, mental, and spiritual fiber of the athlete, of the man who denies himself daily and takes up his cross and follows Thee. Give me good success in my work, but hide pride from me. Save me from the self-complacency that so frequently accompanies success and prosperity. Save me from the spirit of sloth, of self-indulgence, as physical infirmities and decay creep upon me.6”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Although he wasn’t trying to make a uniquely Christian point, I nevertheless find the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson quite provocative. “It is easy in the world,” he wrote, “to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“But what does it mean to “guard” the heart? For one thing, the writer is obviously concerned that the heart be protected from influences outside itself that might jeopardize its integrity. The writer is also focused on the strength and development of the heart in order to increase its capacity to bring order to one’s life.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We are tempted to abandon prayer as a viable exercise and to try getting the results ourselves.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“If my private world is in order, it will be because Iabsorb the words of Christ into my attitudes and actions.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Don’t underestimate the significance of this principle. Today in our media-fashioned world many good and talented leaders face the constant temptation to begin believing the text of their own publicity releases. And if they do, a messianic fantasy gradually infects their personalities and leadership styles. Forgetting who they are not, they begin to make dangerous assumptions about who they are.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We grow through listening, aggressive listening: asking questions, watching intently what is happening around us, taking note of the good or ill consequences that befall people as a result of their choice making.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“When money is limited, one budgets. And when time is in limited supply, the same principle holds. The disorganized person must have a budgeting perspective. And that means determining the difference between the fixed—what one must do—and the discretionary—what one would like to do.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“When I get home after a long day, I go to the chapel and pray. I say to the Lord, “There it is for today; things are finished. Now let’s be serious, is this diocese mine or yours?” The Lord says, “What do you think?” I answer, “I think it’s yours.” “That is true,” the Lord says, “it is mine.” And so I say, “Listen, Lord, it is your turn to take responsibility for and direct the diocese. I’m going now to sleep.”1”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“A DRIVEN PERSON IS GRATIFIED (AND GRATIFIED TEMPORARILY) ONLY BY ACCOMPLISHMENT.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Are we going to order our inner worlds, our hearts, so that they will radiate influence into the outer world? Or will we neglect our private worlds and, thus, permit the outer influences to shape us? This is a choice we must make every day of our lives.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We must examine with care what are the virtues of which we stand most in need, what are those which are most difficult to win, the sins to which we most often fall, and the most frequent and inevitable occasions of our falling. We must turn to God in complete confidence in the hour of battle, abide strongly in the presence of his divine majesty, worship him humbly, and set before him our woes and our weaknesses. And thus we shall find in him all virtues though we may lack them all.3”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones—things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour.4”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“We will know that we have learned this significant principle when we come to the point at which the development and maintenance of a strong inner world becomes the most important single function of our existences.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“When the Christian’s mind becomes dull, he can fall prey to the propaganda of a non-Christian scheme of things, led by people who have not neglected their thinking powers—and have simply outthought us.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

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― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World

“If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity.”
― Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World