Fears tend to lose their grip when people face
them. As Emmi Bonhoeffer states, “From the very moment one feels called to act
is born the strength to bear whatever horror one will feel or see. In some inexplicable way, terror loses its
overwhelming power when it becomes a task that must be faced.” Conversely when we experience past
difficulties as uncontrollable and unpredictable, we are more likely to carry
and accumulate fears and worries.
Running Scared, p298
Our Father...
I'm convinced that most of our problems with prayer originate from a failure to comprehend these two words.
Our Father, Richard Coekin, p30
We have absolutely no evidence that God ever
throws up his hands and says “You are driving me crazy! What more can I say?”
If he says “Do not be afraid” hundreds of times, there is no reason to think
that he will be silent during your struggles.
How strange it would be for God to say, “Okay, you persuaded me. You
aren’t my child.” How backwards! He is the One who persuades us.
Running Scared, p225
My world must be very small for me to be
preoccupied with the opinions of others.
What a relief to be offered something bigger, something more important
than the anxieties that keep me awake at night.
Running Scared, p199
The only appropriate and healthy response is to
treat others the way God has treated us.
The result? People’s (perceived)
opinions don’t have the same power to crush us any more. Instead, we are less concerned about how we
are treated and more concerned with how we treat others. Rejection may still hurt, but it won’t
control us.
Running Scared, p188-9
In all of his learnings from his pastorate in rural Switzerland and his
own reading of Scripture, Karl Barth made a type of conclusion in The Word of God and the Word of Man,
saying, "We must take the trouble to go off far enough to hear the Word
again." Both Barth and Bonhoeffer had to go away to re-hear the good
news they had awoken to first years ago, to be reminded of what to Paul
was "of first importance." As a young preacher and pastor in America, I
am reminded of what Andrew Walls would call, "a certain vulnerability, a
fragility, at the heart of Christianity" (that is, the cross of
Christ). In the midst of the evangelical industrial complex that has
been built here in the West, we must not modify this "good news for the
poor," or try and rephrase it so that it might "work" for the satisfied,
popular, and wealthy.
Chris Nye in
Leadership
What does it mean to store up treasures on
earth? ...It means that anything labelled “mine” is already rusting.
Running Scared, p163
He should be in no doubt that any ability he has and however much he has
derives more from his devotion to prayer than his dedication to
oratory; and so, by praying for himself and for those he is about to
address, he must become a man of prayer before becoming a man of words.
As the hour of his address approaches, before he opens his thrusting
lips he should lift his thirsting soul to God so that he may utter what
he has drunk in and pour out what has filled him
Quoted in
Leadership
If we know Christ and have affirmed our allegiance
to Him, worry is a sign that we are trying to have it both ways. We certainly don’t want to renounce our
allegiance to Jesus, but we want to protect what we feel is our own. We are not sure that the Lord can be trusted
with some of these things, so we look for help elsewhere. And if there is no obvious alternate source
of help, we worry.
Running Scared, p161
