Discernment Quotes

“Once we know, we’re empowered.”
― Elevia DeNobelia, Syl Sabastian

“Discernment gives you the ability to both appreciate the subtle beauty of a Renoir and spot a fake.”
― Hannah Anderson, All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment

“Following your inner guidance has a unique power all its own. Even when others can't understand it, you can feel your soul being pulled to the place it truly belongs.”
― Kianu Starr

“To turn away from the lifeless preachers and publishers of the day—may involve a real cross. Your motives will be misconstrued, your words perverted, and your actions misinterpreted. The sharp arrows of false report will be directed against you. You will be called proud and self-righteous, because you refuse to fellowship empty professors. You will be termed censorious and bitter—if you condemn in plain speech—the subtle delusions of Satan. You will be dubbed narrow-minded and uncharitable, because you refuse to join in singing the praises of the “great” and “popular” men of the day. More and more, you will be made to painfully realize—that the path which leads unto eternal life is “narrow” and that FEW there are who find it. May the Lord be pleased to grant unto each of us—the hearing ear and obedient heart! “Take heed what you hear” and read!”
― Arthur W. Pink

“I see everything outside of me through the lens of everything that is inside of me. Therefore, before I look at the world outside I’d be wise to look at the lens inside.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Life is not random, for randomness is simply purpose that we’ve yet to discern.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Stupidity is not intelligence ‘without’ wisdom. Rather, it’s intelligence ‘without the desire’ for wisdom, which is stupidity at its finest.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The most dangerous thing we can do with intelligence is to let it speak without being both chastised and informed by wisdom. For if we let it speak without the constraints and forbearance of wisdom, we will destroy ourselves. And in doing so, we will be so caught up in our ‘intelligence’ that we won’t even realize that it’s ‘us’ that’s killing ‘us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“You see, we don’t have enough sense to make these decisions. Somehow, you just get led to where you’re supposed to be, if you’re willing to submit.”
― Wendell Berry

“Truth is the compass in life's journey.
Use it and you are wise, lose it and you are lost.”
― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

“The absence of God in our lives is a result of our absence of reason, for if He is absent it is because we requested it. So, to have an absence of reason that results in the absence of God leaves me absent of both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The only truth is within you
Pessimist people
Refute and dispute
I speak from deep in the root
The spirit
The soul
The self
Guide me through life's commute
I'm just admiring the view”
― Andrew Edward Lucier, Awakenigma Allegory Anomalous

“It’s not so much about the difficult place that I’m at, although that’s what’s probably got most of my attention. Rather, it’s more about how I got here. Because whatever that is, if I don’t change it I’m going to live out the whole of my life is some pretty similar places.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In reality, how far can I run from that which I fear if that which I fear is based on that which I think? With that said, maybe it’s more about running ‘from’ the way I currently think and running ‘to’ the way I should think.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“We equate wisdom with intelligence, which is about the same as equating a can opener with a can. If you don’t apply the first to the second, neither of them matter.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“To journey as Abraham and Sarah did is to reject our inclination to protect ourselves by force. In their going--in our going--we embrace our vulnerability and forsake our tribe in order to journey with God and God’s tribe, pronouncing God’s blessing upon the world.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“If I really believe that my timing is perfect, maybe the thing that’s perfect is my denial about my timing. And if that’s the case, maybe now is the perfect time to be honest about that.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I'm perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad."

"Society is all bad.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I would encourage you to always look at the little things, for little though they are, they hold great things. And I would likewise encourage you to pay enough attention to the big things so that you don’t lose the little things that lie within them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Growing up means changing what we know so that we might finally come to know how much there is that we can really change.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Hope sees what we can’t. And because we can’t, hope asks us to believe that it can.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Risk is where uncertainty meets vision. If we have vision, uncertainty is the confirmation that we’re forging fresh paths through the forest of opportunity. If we don’t have vision, uncertainty is the stop sign at the edge of the woods.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I spread the Good News as a chosen one but it's something about me that raises their envy and jealousy. Maybe it's because I'm a spiritual god and have the aura of angelicacy.
When confronted, they deny the existence of thee but my discernment lets me see clear water from the muddy. I used to pity myself like "why me?" But now I know the company of the miser is misery. Where there is misery, company is needing & of all the disorders of the soul, envy is the one no one admit to breeding.”
― Jose R. Coronado, The Land Flowing With Milk And Honey

“I don’t think that there are many true leaders. For a true leader possesses both the seasoned acumen and the utterly fearless temperament to slice through the boggy agendas and the cumbersome biases that lesser people have come to justify as wholly good and impeachably righteous simply because these lesser things have become the whole of their calling. And no true leader would ever lead himself or anyone else to such a pitiful place as that.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“From somewhere off in the distance, a loon called into the ascending night. And drifting across the lake’s sleepy surface, it’s call lent both a stirring mystery and a gentle magic to the lake and the now drowsy forest that surrounded it. And I remember thinking that no song I have ever heard in the entirety of my life ever conveyed so much with so little.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Our sense of our own calling must begin with curiosity about how God has called God's people from the very beginning, because the vocations held within the Church are not simply vocations of a "New Testament" kind, but are rooted in the authority of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“God calls God’s people to create a new community of shalom. We must take care not to simply make God's mission into a social ethic or universal morality. God’s call is not merely a means for achieving better wages and working conditions for the enslaved. It cannot be narrowly defined as a socio-political intervention or strategy...God did not give Moses a theory of justice. God wanted to foster real, transformed, and renewed relationships among the people of Israel and the people of Egypt. Remember, the story of Israel in the land of Egypt began with friendship between a lost son and a ruler, Pharaoh and Joseph. What is broken by Israel’s slide into slavery is that original relationship. A time had come when people did not remember the blessings they have been for one another. Shalom, peace, is not a political "symbol" or "myth," but a real action of relationship that has a communal/social function in building a different kind of kingdom than the reign of humanity”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“More recently, artists have portrayed the overshadowing of Mary as a kind of sexual ecstasy, but these interpretations say more about us than they do about Luke or Mary. The other modern trend, which is to “demythologize” Mary’s experience by arguing that Luke has derived her calling narrative from those other more monstrous mythologies, misses the point.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“The work of an apostle, from the first ones sent out by Jesus to anyone aligned with the reign of peace, is to be God's loving word to every part of the world. Echoing the Word, they are sent out to confront the powers and principalities by rejecting state violence and revolutionary violence, and, instead putting on the armor of peace.”
― C. Andrew Doyle, Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church

“I must first possess an understanding of who the person is before I can create a vision of what they can become, for the truly discerning person knows that the former has already laid the groundwork for the latter.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough