The happiest people I know are not those who are the most beautiful, rich or famous. The happiest people I see are simply those who stay cheerful and try to cheer up others while getting through their own bad stuff
Success is not a destination: It is a journey. The happiest people I know are those who are busy working toward specific objectives. The most bored and miserable people I know are those who are drifting along with no worthwhile objectives in mind.
Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.
God gives us resources according to our dreams and according to our obedience. And God doesn't give those resources until we've started walking in obedience.
Note this, I beseech you: in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.
All men who give up themselves in obedience unto God, they are received in Christ's obedience, viz. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel.
A culture fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
...we know that God arranges the opportunities for salvation in different ways. Our situation is that we respond eagerly or in a laggardly manner to these opportunities made available by God to us. God made the call come out of your homeland; Abraham by coming out was exercising obedience. There was the instruction come into the land; it was done, and that was the work of obedience. But the addition which I shall show you has to do with the grace of God, who gave a command - and a promise.
The happiest people I know are not those who find their golden ticket; they are those who, while in pursuit of worthy goals, discover and treasure the beauty and sweetness of the everyday moments.
Never take your obedience as the reason God blesses you; obedience is the outcome of being rightly related to God.
The happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others
A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.
If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.
Just as Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered, we learn obedience by the difficult circumstances we face. When we obey the Word of God that is spoken by the Holy Spirit, we will grow and mature in the times of conflict and suffering. Our knowledge of Scripture is not the key. Obedience is.
I think we've overstated that God is the God who wants us to obey. Obedience is not the end game. Obedience is only our calling so that we can step into our freedom.
Obedience unites us so closely to God that it in a way transforms us into Him, so that we have no other will but His. If obedience is lacking, even prayer cannot be pleasing to God.