Levi Lusko Quotes

Discerning God’s calling is more a relationship than a route, more journey than destination. It’s about who you are becoming more than where you are going. Perhaps it’s less about what you do and more about how well you do whatever you do.

Life in real time is messy. The fingerprints of God are often invisible until you look at them in the rearview mirror.

Suffering isn’t an obstacle to being used by God. It is an opportunity to be used like never before.

a failure to understand how powerful and extraordinary God’s plans for you are will lead to you being taken advantage of by the enemy and failing to live up to your potential.

Remember this: God isn’t scared of what you’re scared of. But you don’t have to pretend like you’re not frightened. Naming your fear is part of getting through it.

Right now you are in training for a trial you’re not yet in. Public victory comes from private discipline.

God doesn’t expect you to be happy about what has been torn from your hands—whether it’s a marriage, your health, a job, or someone you love—but if you are willing to trust him, he can turn trash into triumph.

Because of Jesus, we have hope. And because of hope, even in the midst of the worst storms of this life, we have an anchor for our souls.

Trust me when I say this: the issue isn’t whether your life is going well or falling apart; the question is, what makes you so sure you can tell the difference? Things are seldom as they appear.

DESTRUCTION BY DISTRACTION IS DIFFICULT TO DETECT WHEN IT’S HAPPENING, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T INVOLVE BAD THINGS BUT GOOD THINGS THAT TAKE THE PLACE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS.

What oxygen is to the lungs, hope is to our survival in the world.

when you don’t recognize the value of what you have in your hands, you will always get from it far less than it is worth.

You have been made for a person and a place. That person is Jesus, and the place is heaven.” Until you’re tapped into that knowledge, your heart will be restless.

Public victory comes from private discipline.

Life is more than who’s fighting whom on UFC, what so-and-so tweeted, which celebrities just broke up, and what the latest and greatest food truck is serving up. You were meant to live on a higher level.

I don't believe in positive thinking as a replacement for God but as a response to God. My goal isn't that you would see your metaphorical cup as half full: I want you to see it as constantly overflowing!

Far more often, you must keep showing up, day in and day out, until the hard, unglamorous work adds up and pays off. It’s easy to misunderstand what you are seeing when you look at people taking a victory lap or receiving attention or promotion. Their celebration is only the tip of the iceberg. Invisible to your eye is what’s underwater—the hell they went through on the road to success.

THE MORE PASSIONATE YOU ARE ABOUT SETTING YOUR SOUL TO HEAVEN’S TIME ZONE, THE MORE PROGRESS YOU WILL MAKE IN YOUR CALLING HERE ON EARTH.

The only way to truly live is to run toward the roar.

The only way to get to victory is to be willing to make mistakes on the way there.

This was a total lightbulb moment in the initial twenty-four hours after she went to heaven. “She is with him, and he is in me.” Hope has a rope.

The things God deposits in your spirit in the midst of suffering are the same things that someday other people will desperately need.

God’s up to something! He’s turning your mess into a message.

How many times had I sat next to people who were suffering but been completely unaware of the agony they were going through?

It’s when you humble yourself as a servant that people want to follow you as a leader.

Our goal should be to pray such gutsy prayers that God says amen to us.

Refuse to live a life that is “cut.” Don’t hobble back and forth between Jesus and the world, or slowly you will become like a sickly hybrid version of the “you” you were born to be.

The most important battle is the one you fight within, in your mind and heart, to not give up. If you give up hope, you won’t have the motivation to do anything else in a critical situation.

You don’t have to live full of dread and desperation. The gloomy mountain you now look at in fear and terror, once it is aflame with the glory of God, will transform before your eyes. Joy is waiting.

It is also crucial that you don’t wait for a crisis before you get these sorts of rhythms in place. You must train for the trial you’re not yet in. The worst time to try to get ready for a marathon is when you are running one. We made the decision as a family to plant ourselves in the house of the Lord before the bottom dropped out, and as a result, we had the root systems in place when we needed them the most.

Getting to heaven has nothing to do with our righteous works. Our entrance fee is paid for fully by Jesus and his perfect sacrifice. But Scripture is clear that our treasure in heaven is connected to our lives on earth.

I want to show you that God doesn’t expect you to be happy about what has been torn from your hands—whether it’s a marriage, your health, a job, or someone you love—but if you are willing to trust him, he can turn trash into triumph.

The devil could only tell Jesus to jump off the roof of the temple; he couldn't actually push him. Satan is a defeated foe. When Jesus has your back, the devil has no more power over you than you choose to concede to him. He whispers into your ear but can't make you do anything.

There are lots of ways to grow in your relationship with God’s Spirit: serving other people, taking a walk and venting to the Lord, reading the Bible, talking to a friend you can be real with. But I have found that there is nothing so powerful and effective as gathering together with the church.

If you can do anything else, he told them, do it! Be a banker, practice law, be a surgeon, and glorify God by doing so. Only become a pastor, he advised, if you literally can’t not. Do it only if, as it was with Jeremiah, God’s Word is a consuming fire inside your bones and you are unable to hold it back.2

Your words can unlock a life you love or one you loathe. It is up to you whether the self-fulfilling prophecies you articulate become a delight or a dungeon. Fortunately, as C. S. Lewis wrote, “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” If you talked your way into your current mess, you can very likely talk your way out. One of my favorite Bible

Maybe, like me, you have gotten so good at listening to yourself that you have forgotten to speak to yourself. It’s easy to drift along with the speakers of your soul blasting the play-by-play commentary of your naturally negative self. It’s time you fire yourself as your personal critic and rehire yourself as a coach. You can alter how you feel through changing the way you speak.

When you’re a Christian and you’re going through a great time of difficulty, you will notice that those around you who don’t know Jesus Christ—especially those you’ve shared your faith with before—will lean in extra close. Their ears perk up. They want to see if what you have advertised is going to prove true in the product demonstration. You told them that Jesus is the light of your world. Well, now your power has been cut, and they want to see if you can glow in the dark. You

Take David, the man after God’s own heart. For decades, he held on to God’s promise that he would become king. But then he gave up and moved to Goliath’s native country, where he worked for the Philistine king and fought the wrong battles (1 Samuel 27). Abraham, the father of faith, had bad days. He once ran away from the promised land and lied about his wife being his sister to protect himself (Genesis 20). Why? He was afraid. The apostle Paul begged God three times to take away a painful trial that was far too heavy for him to carry (2 Corinthians 12:7–8). Elijah, the mightiest of the miracle-working prophets, had a total emotional breakdown when a woman cussed him out. He ended up running away from home, hiding under a tree, and wishing for death (1 Kings 19:4). The prophet Jeremiah got so stressed out that he told God he was never going to preach again (Jeremiah 20:9). And then there’s John the Baptist. Jesus said that he is the best person ever to be born of a woman. He had such a big crisis of faith in prison that he doubted whether he had made the right choice in baptizing Jesus as the Messiah (Luke 7:20).

Once you are married, even if you have a banging sex life and make love for an hour every single day of the week (that exhausts me just to type it!), there will still be twenty-three hours of the day when you are not having sex. The problem I see with so many people's approach to dating is that they seem to prepare for only what will amount to a very small percentage of the time spent married. The benefit of having a good friendship in the early stages without any accompanying physical affection is that it will give you something to do the other twenty-three hours of the day.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”1 When your heart is broken, you don’t know where to go. Colors lose their brightness, and the world seems so gray. The ground is unsteady, and food tastes like ash. Your stomach flutters in a free fall that doesn’t stop. Your fists ball up, but there’s nothing to fight. A screaming, heaving, sinking panic rises in your chest. It can’t be outrun, won’t be shut down, and refuses to be put out. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go through any of this by

At its most basic level, to have hope is to believe that something good is going to happen. That help is on the way. That it’s not over yet, and no matter how dark it seems, there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is a confident expectation. A joyful anticipation. An active, dynamic, energizing enthusiasm. When you have hope, gale-force winds can blow and tsunami waves can smash into the hull of your life, but you are buoyed by the belief that the best is yet to come, that brighter days are ahead. Hope quietly tells your heart that all is not lost, even as storms rage. Our hope is a living hope, because Jesus lives forever.

Proverbs 30:32 advises, “If you have been foolish in exalting yourself, or if you have devised evil, put your hand on your mouth.” (That right there is some good relationship advice. How much better would your life be if you got better at putting your hand on your mouth?) “For as the churning of milk produces butter, and wringing the nose produces blood, so the forcing of wrath produces strife” (v. 33).

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, emphasis added).

But I believe the day will come when you will see that God always grants incredible power to those called to face impossible pain.

THERE?

definitely not going to be all right. Elisha continued: “There are more on our side than on the enemies’.

Gehazi processed this and did some quick counting. Looking at the soldiers, he estimated that there were five or six thousand. Then

looked at himself and Elisha, and the counting was much easier: one, two. Good thing Elisha got into the ministry, because math is clearly not his strong suit, Gehazi thought, genuinely feeling sorry for the bald, weathered man who was obviously nuts. Elisha smiled, and with a twinkle in his eye he prayed, “Lord,

open his eyes so he can see.” Gehazi looked outside once more. He still saw the soldiers with their armor and their weapons, but now that wasn’t all he saw. On the hills above those soldiers, he could now see another army—a bigger, far more powerful army. There were glorious, glowing warriors riding chariots that shimmered like fire, spilling up the canyon into the sky. Bright like the dawn and as powerful as a thunderous waterfall, each of them wielded a terrible bow with an arrow at the ready. There must have been a hundred thousand of them. The sight made Gehazi’s fingertips tingle and his heart flutter. He felt giddy like a child and wanted to laugh and run. Safe—above all else, he felt safe. And he was. What is

looked

The apostle Paul put it this way: “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT).

years

Isn’t it so strange how you can’t get away from the moon, try as you might, and yet you can’t touch it? It remains perpetually in front of you as though you could stretch your arm out and grab it with your fingers, but it is just out of reach. Happiness can feel like that. Like it is something other people experience but it only flirts with you and haunts you every time you glance out the window.

The moon landing is, hands down, the greatest thing mankind has ever done. The cross is the greatest thing that has ever been done.

And tonight when you see the moon, remember this: It isn't the critic who counts. It's the lunatics who end up changing the world, one small step at a time.

And of course I did the only reasonable thing a grown boy would do: I sat there and gawked.

From the altar to the grave, Jesus cares about every detail of your life.

This is the war: every moment of every day, we must make the all-important choice of whether we will rely on the naked eye. Will we trust what we can see is there, or believe what God says is there? It’s a decision we are continually confronted with. The apostle Paul put it this way: “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT).

What is so important about this Bible story (2 Kings 6:15–17) is that the angels didn’t show up when Gehazi’s eyes were opened. They were there when he couldn’t see them. Present but invisible. Gehazi was staring at them every time he looked outside; he just didn’t know it. When God opened Gehazi’s eyes to see the unseen, he still saw the enemy soldiers. They didn’t go away. Why was he no longer afraid of them? He now understood that the thing that had him surrounded was itself surrounded by God. So it always is. HIDDEN

I knew that what I was seeing and living was only part of the story. We are not supposed to walk by sight but by faith. I made the decision to look not at just what was in front of me but at what God said was there. I had to study and investigate what God’s word has to say about what had taken place. I had to put on the eyes of a Lion. BREAKING

Taking something is an action. It’s a choice. Losing, on the other hand, happens on its own, when you’re not paying attention. The truth is, your heart will get lost if you let it. If you would have heart, you must take heart. David

The symbol of the anchor is powerful because of what it stands for: hope. The book of Hebrews speaks of “this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19). That’s a game changer. A boat that is anchored can be battered, but it won’t be moved. Because of Jesus, we have hope. And because of hope, even in the midst of the worst storms of this life, we have an anchor for our souls.

Great marriages require a constant infusion of commitment, tears, and lots and lots of forgiveness.

The transcendent moments in worship where all of God’s people are rallied together, praising the Lord, are like those fleeting moments above the depths: a dark, hard week is coming, and you need all the sustenance you can get. Never take for granted the opportunity to breathe deeply when you are surrounded by an atmosphere of expectant faith supercharged by the presence of God. It is also crucial that you don’t wait for a crisis before you get these sorts of rhythms in place. You must train for the trial you’re not yet in. The worst time to try to get ready for a marathon is when you are running one. We

I dare you to believe that the day will come where what you are most scared of right now will be included in your highlight reel as a triumphant victory.

but there’s nothing

YOU SHOULD DRINK BEFORE YOU’RE THIRSTY AND EAT BEFORE YOU’RE HUNGRY; YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU WILL PLUNGE INTO PAIN AND CAREEN WILDLY INTO CRISIS.

IF YOU TAKE A SELFIE, YOU WON’T SEE THE VERSION OF YOURSELF YOU ARE MEANT TO BECOME, NO MATTER WHAT FILTER YOU USE.

Please fill me with your Spirit and give me strength right now. I believe.

Do today what others won’t; do tomorrow what others can’t.

Never take for granted the opportunity to breathe deeply when you are surrounded by an atmosphere of expectant faith supercharged by the presence of God. It is also crucial that you don’t wait for a crisis

Belief is the antidote to losing heart. It puts the lens of faith in front of your eyes and gives you access to limitless courage. As we wait on the Lord, our hearts are strengthened, and we see things that are invisible and can then do things

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

The moment you announce that bedtime is drawing near, your kids will collectively lose their minds. Successfully getting four little sets of teeth brushed, bodies bathed, pajamas on, and rpm down is about as manageable as simultaneously riding four bucking broncos. Anyone who tells you different is a liar. Progress you make on one front is immediately challenged by at least one child revolting and undoing all your work. At some point someone will inevitably be running down the hall with underwear on her head, wearing a pair of her mom’s high heels. Who just wrote on the wall with that marker, and where did you get that cookie?

Benih tidak pernah terlihat seperti panen yang dikandungnya

Tidak ada yang bisa mewujudkan mimpinya tanpa ada orang lain yang mencoba mengubahnya menjadi mimpi buruk.

Tuhan memiliki rencana untuk menghasilkan yang baik dari apa yang Anda hadapi.

Pikiran berada di tempatnya dan di dalam dirinya dapat membuat surga sebagai neraka, neraka sebagai surga.

Anda dapat mengubah cara Anda merasakan dengan mengubah cara Anda berpikir.

Ketika lidah berfungsi sebagaimana mestinya, itu laksana musim semi yang menyengarkan dan pohon buah yang memberi sari - sari makanan untuk pertumbuhan yang sehat.

Anda dapat mengubah perasaan Anda dengan mengubah cara Anda berkata-kata.

When you choose to declare war, you are refusing to go gently in the night or to be taken without a fight. You are declaring war on the version of yourself that you don’t want to be. You’re choosing a different direction.

God, I believe that I am a sinner. I’m broken, and I can’t fix myself. I believe that Jesus is your Son and that he died on the cross in my place. I believe that he rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and turn to you. Please forgive me and help me follow you. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

And you matter to me. I pray that, even though things in your life are scary or uncertain or up in the air right now, you know you can rest. You can rest because you are not alone. You can rest because of who Jesus is and what he has done. You can rest because nothing you do can make him love you more or less, and because no matter how hard life gets, nothing that happens to you can destroy you. You are free because he is the resurrection and the life. Not someday. Today. Right now.

In The Hunger Games, President Snow said hope is the only thing more powerful than fear.3

There is a calling on your life. A great, big, God-sized calling. God has plans for you and has been dreaming about them since before you were even born. You are destined for impact.

HOW DO YOU LIVE OUT AN EXTRAORDINARY CALLING WHILE DOING ORDINARY THINGS AND LIVING IN A WORLD THAT IS ALL SCREWED UP?

Masking pain doesn’t heal it any faster; it actually slows it down and stunts your rehabilitation.

When we proclaim that something other than heaven will do what only heaven can do, we set ourselves up for disaster.

Just as we rely on Jesus for salvation, we also rely on Him for our daily security, sense of direction, and deep, abiding peace. When we find ourselves feeling lost, slipping and falling down a mountain, we can cry out and He’ll come to us. We don’t have to wander on the mountain afraid.

This is what I believe you will find on this journey. Not just human love, but a divine love so enchanting, intoxicating, and all-consuming that it will change how you approach human love. Loving God so fiercely doesn’t make other loves lesser; it makes them possible.

It’s funny how the dysfunction in your own life is much harder to see than that in people’s lives. It’s often invisible to us because we see it every day, and we just carry on with blind spots, completely oblivious to our obliviousness.

When you try to serve God without being fueled by time spent with God, you start to act like you’re God.

But not feeling is not the same as healing, and it will only stunt your progress

When we have our backs to the sun, our shadows stretch out before us, seeming bigger and longer than they really are. Those shadows can terrify and dominate us, causing all sorts of unwanted behaviors and conflict. But if we simply turn one hundred eighty degrees and face the sun, our perspective will change. Our shadows will still be there, but we will be unable to see and focus on them.

I see the higher views bringing us new perspective and insight. Increasingly, we care less about things we once obsessed over; we now see they don’t matter like we once thought they did. As we get closer to the end of the journey, we (hopefully) better understand what is truly meaningful. There is significance in the spiral. It is not meaningless. The goal is to get closer to the center as you go around and around in smaller and smaller circles.

You don’t need to panic when you feel you are in a free fall, because the fate of the universe is not in your hands! You must do what only you can do, then trust Him for what only He can do. So when a blow comes, go ahead and feel bad for the time required to take ten steps, then shake it off. But know that it’s not into the bricks you are falling—it’s into His grace and His love, which has no end to its height or depth or width. It never runs out. Obedience is our responsibility. The outcome is His.

The stages of spiritual development don’t promise more quantity but instead proximity to Him.

In a survival situation you can last three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter in extreme conditions, and three minutes without air. But you can’t make it three seconds without hope.4