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* Quotes, Volume OneBelow are quotes about music, worship, and the Christian life. I hope you will find them to be as meaningful as I have. Remember that additional quotes can be found at Quotes, Volume Two.Some thoughts about music: "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." "Without music, life is a journey through a desert." "Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end!" "Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." "In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain." "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." "The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes." "I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness." A Morning Prayer "O Lord God, I praise and magnify Your name that You have set Your seal upon my inmost being, not leaving me to my own poor and petty selfhood or to the sole empire of sensual passion and desire, but calling me to be an heir of Your eternal Kingdom. I bless You for that knocking at my heart’s door that reminds me of Your waiting presence. I bless You for Your hand upon my life, and for the sure knowledge that, however I may falter and fail, yet underneath are Your everlasting arms. O God who alone knows what lies before me this day, grant that in every hour of it I may stay close to You. Let me be in the world, yet not of it. Let me use this world without abusing it. If I buy, let me be as though I possessed not. If I have nothing, let me be as possessing all things. Let me today embark on no undertaking that is not in line with Your will for my life, nor shrink from any sacrifice which Your will may demand. Suggest, direct, control every movement of my mind; for my Lord Christ’s sake. Amen."
"The light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!"
The most destructive habit -- Worry "I love You, Lord, not doubtingly, but with absolute certainty. Your Word beat upon my heart until I fell in love with You, and now the universe and everything in it tells me to love You, and tells the same thing to us all, so that we are without excuse. And what do I love when I love Thee? ...There is a kind of light, and a kind of melody, and a kind of fragrance, and a kind of food, and a kind of embracing when I love my God. They are the kind of light and sound and odor and food and love that affect the sense of my inner man. There is another dimension of life in which my soul reflects a light that space itself cannot contain. It hears melodies that never fade with time. It inhales lovely scents that are not blown away by the wind. It eats without diminishing or consuming the supply. It never gets separated from the embrace of God and never gets tired of it. That is what I love when I love my God. I came to love You late, O Beauty so ancient and so new; I came to love you late. You were within me and I was outside, where I rushed about wildly searching for You like some monster loose in Your beautiful world. You were with me, but I was not with You. You called me, You shouted to me, You broke past my deafness. You bathed me in Your light, You wrapped me in Your splendor, You sent my blindness reeling, You gave out such a beautiful fragrance, and I drew it in and came breathing hard after You. I tasted, and it made me hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned to know Your peace. All my hopes are in Your great mercy and nowhere else. ...O Love that always burns and is never extinguished! O Love that is my God, set me afire!" "Most people die with the music still in them." "A life well-lived doesn't end any more than music ends... it echoes through time with whispers of beauty and grace. If we listen, we can hear the encore with our hearts, for the song plays on, just as love lives on." "Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it." "A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." "Don't be so busy working for God that it destroys the work of God in you." "Repetition does nothing to diminish the prayer." "Having your quiet time with the Lord in the evening is like having choir rehearsal after the concert." When Mother Teresa received her Nobel Prize, she was asked the question, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She replied with the trademark twinkle in her eyes:"Go home and love your family!" "I wonder what would happen if one day all of our words went away. What if one day the entire body of Christ were struck dumb? Couldn't write a word. Couldn't speak a word. Couldn't even move our lips to mouth one. What then? What would be left? Our lives.
And what would our lives say? What would they say about who we are and who God is? What would they say about what we believe? If we were to take away the words, how much of the gospel could the world understand? Would we discover that the world is illiterate? Or that our lives are illegible? Would the writing on the pages of our lives, which we always took to be literature, turn out to be the scribbling of a preschooler? Or would the pages simply be blank? "Preach the gospel," Saint Francis said, "and when necessary, use words." And he said that, I think, because he realized that the most impactful words are those incarnate in our lives. Words that have been made flesh and dwell among us. When asked why he wanted to go to Africa to work among the natives, Albert Schweitzer said it was because he wanted his life to be his sermon. He wanted the days of his week to be a Sunday text so clear and so compelling that little else needed to be said. As it turns out, little else needed be. His life was heard by millions. I wonder. If someone were to come to our village, our neighborhood, our place of work, and that person began to describe Jesus, would anybody hearing the description say 'We know Him well; He has been living here for years!'" "Remind me, God, that when it's lifted to you, no talent or effort is ever too small." "We all have expiration dates, but only God can read the bar code." "Jesus doesn't want to be number one in your life; He doesn't want to have first place in your life; He wants to be your life!"
"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." The meaning of dying to self has to be something as obvious as the fact that... I die. I cease to be. I have to step over my body to get on with life. I am no longer the reason for my existence. I am no longer concerned with my own happiness. How can you be concerned with the happiness of someone who is dead? I am no more. I am no longer in the picture. I am no longer the center of my own little universe. I no longer arrange the world around myself. Go to the place where you used to find John Fischer, and you won't find him anymore. He's dead. The place is empty, and instead, you should encounter a shining being standing next to the door wanting to know why you are seeking the dead among the living. At least this is the way it should be, and the way it can be. Come to where you used to find me, and you should find Christ Himself, living and caring for others at the expense of Himself, like He always did. Dying to self has to mean I live for someone else. Christ does not ask us to die just for the fun of it. Christ asks us to get rid of one life because He has a much better one in mind. Our old life is only capable of caring for its small little self. The new one is selfless, generous, broad in goodwill, and abundant with love and kindness. The new life loses itself in God and everyone else. The new life is like Christ when He gave up being God so he could be a servant. Dying to self is a real death that takes place in my conscience, in my plans, in the way I order my day, and especially in the relationships that are closest to me. It is a death to my ego. It is the end of centering my world, my time, and my relationships around me. It has to be my real conscious self that dies, or I will never be able to step over this dead body and get on with my life in the Spirit. The only thing to be feared at the cross is loss of pride and position, and anyone who can't afford to lose these would not be happy at the cross anyway. The present reality of the cross both breaks us and allows us to be broken. But in that brokenness, we discover more than what we could ever bargain for. We come expecting judgment and receive mercy; we come expecting death and receive life; we come expecting rejection and find acceptance; we come knowing we are dirty and receive cleansing for our sin. Such a love could only have a name called grace. A man who is always on the cross, just piece after piece, cannot be happy in that process. But when that man takes his place on the cross with Jesus Christ once and for all, and commends his spirit to God, lets go of everything and ceases to defend himself—sure, he has died, but there is a resurrection that follows! "God gives us the cross, and then the cross gives us God." Being thankful is not telling God you appreciate the fact that your life is not in shambles. If that is the basis of your gratitude, you are on slippery ground. Every day of your life, you face the possibility that a blessing in your life may be taken away. But blessings are only signs of God’s love. We are not ultimately grateful that we are still holding our blessings. We still cherish the blessings, but not because we have to have them. Gratitude is our ability to see the grace of God, morning by morning, no matter what else greets us in the course of the day. "In our daily lives, we must make sure that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy." "When some folks get to heaven, they're going to be surprised to find that everything is not off-white!" This quote, submitted by Lee Steers, was shared with him by a brash, young minister of music one day in a moment of frustration while he was painting two gray 8' Shure column speakers off-white to match the colors in the sanctuary. As you may have guessed, that brash, young minister of music was me. Now, some 30 years later. I still think people will be surprised when they get to heaven to find that it is not a sterile place where everything is white and gold. Rather, I think heaven will be a place bursting with vivid colors that make our colors on earth seem pale in comparison. When you read in Revelation about the size of some of the single stones, they make the Hope diamond look like tiny creek gravel! Back in the late 70s I heard about a pastor who actually died and was brought back to life. During the time that he was "dead" he saw the light and felt the overwhelming love and peace that so many people who have had "near-death" experiences tell about. However, he also saw what he thought was heaven. It was a city sparkling like diamonds, alive with brilliant color -- and all through the city he saw this clear thick acrylic/diamond-like street. For several days after this experience, he didn't tell anyone about it, because what he saw was not the way heaven was described in Revelation -- and he didn't want to tell the people in his church that the Bible was wrong. Finally he summoned enough courage to open his Bible, and was amazed to find that what he saw was exactly what John had described. Check it out for yourself. In Revelation 21 in the King James and every other translation I've checked, every time gold is mentioned there is an additional description saying it was "clear, like transparent glass." Apparently gold in its purest form is completely clear. So after all these years, I still stand by my quote, but share it not in frustration but in gratitude and amazement about the beautiful, colorful, wonderful place that God has prepared for us. - Don Hearts On Fire I wanted it. But when it did come I said, "Go home!" I didn't know I didn't know a wildfire, only when I stopped running, only then "I am the only Christian that somebody knows." "Stop telling God how big your storm is. Instead tell your storm how big your GOD is." "Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace, and your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace." The Holy Land of the Broken Heart
Jesus, in this life of mine
All that I would hold on to,
All the useless ways of my will
Hollow brag, ambition’s boast, “Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.” Extend your forgiveness. If you have been forgiven by God, then there is room for you to forgive another human being. If God has forgiven you, then there is a wellspring of mercy from which you can draw and give to someone else. No one has offended you more than you have already offended God! Instruments of God A small, wooden flute,
it awaits the breath
my often-empty life
the small, wooden flute and I,
and the one whose touch creates “The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.” “The gospel is like ‘living water,’ (hudon), Jesus told the Samaritan woman. Water fills any receptacle without retaining the form of any. The container doesn’t matter. Content stays the same, containers change. Using 21st-Century containers are first-century imperatives. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Praise God for Christmas
Praise God for the Incarnation,
I will not sing of shepherds watching flocks on frosty night
I will not sing of stable bare in Bethlehem,
Tonight I will sing praise to the Father
And I will sing praise to the infinite eternal Son who became most finite – a Baby;
Praise Him in the heavens, My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following You does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that my desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. “Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.” Hitler sent fourteen armored divisions across the Polish border. The Polish army was committed to the traditions of the cavalry and sent twelve cavalry brigades against the German tanks. In the traditions of the great cavalry divisions of the Prussian army, the Polish cavalry was molded for warfare as it had been fought in the 18th and 19th centuries. When the divisions of German armor came streaming across the border, the Polish generals sent wave after wave of cavalry, men mounted on horses, against the tanks. The battle lasted three weeks. Poland was choked with the bodies of horses and brave men who had gone into a battle with a strategy formed for warfare in a previous period. Today the Church goes into spiritual battle in an electronic culture, seeking to communicate the gospel in a new cultural environment. In a culture dominated by television, films, CDs, and computers, the Church continues to pursue strategies that were developed for a culture in which books, journals, and rhetorical addresses were the most powerful means of communication. Like the Polish cavalry, mainline Protestant churches are dying in this culture -- empty and abandoned, strewn across America's landscape like horses and men of the Polish cavalry on the fields of Poland. Flatter me – and I may not believe you. Criticize me – and I may not like you. Ignore me – and I may not forgive you. Encourage me – and I will never forget you. Only You
My wish is
Not to waste my time anymore
To order my life in a new way,
Let it become visible in my life
That in You is my treasure You shall above all things be glad and young. For if you're young, whatever life you wear it will become you; And if you are glad, whatever's living will yourself become. Illustrator/painter Gustave Dore, was handed a painting of Jesus just finished by one of his students. Asked for his critique, Dore studied it, his mind searching for the right words. At last he handed it back to the student. "If you loved Him more," he said, "you would have painted Him better." From prayer that asks that I may be Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee. From fearing when I should aspire, From faltering when I should climb higher, From silken self, O Captain, free Thy soldier who would follow Thee. "Revival is when God gets tired of being misrepresented and shows up to represent Himself." "You cannot play the piano well unless you are singing within you." "There is something terribly wrong when we argue about the Bible and enjoy it less." When Rich Mullins gave people his autograph, he always wrote, "Be God's." That was his signature statement. Many of us want to be "good" and Rich believed that being good was a noble pursuit. But the highest pursuit was not to be good, but to be God's. The best thing any of us can be is fully devoted to the God who loves us with a passionate, reckless, furious love. "Practice doesn't make perfect, nor is it supposed to. Practice is about increasing your repertoire of ways to recover from your mistakes." "Only the mediocre are their best at all times." "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but He shouts in our pain; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." "Many people will walk in and out of your life -- but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." Churches are filled with 'undiscipled disciples,' as Jess Moody has called them. Most problems in churches today can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ." Suffering creates the possibility of growth in holiness, but only to those who, by letting all else go, are open to the training - not by arguing with the Lord about what they did or did not do to deserve punishment, but by praying, 'Lord, show me what You have for me in this.'" "I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence -- we need to listen to God because it's not what we say but what He says to us and through us -- that matters."
"A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned." "We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, Who is sending love letters to the world." Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more -- a grateful heart, Not thankful when it pleases me As if Thy blessings had spare days. But such a heart whose pulse would be Thy praise. "The right thing to do with godly habits is to immerse them in the life of the Lord until they become such a spontaneous expression of our lives that we are no longer aware of them." As a result of the Fall. we all have a deadly preoccupation with ourselves. We are self-aware, self-focused, self-conscious, self-made, self-protecting,self-promoting, self-centered, and selfish. Conversion to Christ is nothing less than getting over ourselves. That's why there is more than a subtle change that happens at the foot of the Cross. A death takes place there. Christianity is not about self-help but rather self-death. New life begins when we each abandon "me" and fall on the mercy of a God who loves us in spite of ourselves and a Christ who gave Himself in our place. In that moment, we embrace freedom from the perpetual doom of the flesh and take up the cause of living solely for the One who freed us. The greatest truth of God is that He is worthy of our worship, and the deepest truth about ourselves is that we have been created to worship Him. When we actually do this, we find the real and eternal end of our existence. Why is it that so many people are hard, cold, loveless, fearful, introverted, sad, scared, empty, angry, violent, cunning, self-center and self-consumed? The answer, bottom-line, is that they have never really worshiped God. They have never bowed to Him, submitted to Him, seen Him in His glory and love, and risen up to praise Him, to make joyful noises and shouts before Him. They have never known this release, or if they have known it for a moment, they have refused to say there. "I will not offer God that which costs me nothing." "Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the selfsame sounds On my spirit make a music, too." "When we labor to refine our craftsmanship, by perfecting our technical skills, by identifying deeply with our chosen medium, by endless practice with its expressive potentials, all of which require time and sweat and often frustration, we are not just pursuing dexterity - we are searching for creative communion with those materials, and to the degree we achieve it we have achieved craftsmanship." LOUDER is not necessarily better. FASTER is not necessarily more spiritual! "The absence of craftsmanship is signaled by shoddiness, by disrespect for the material, by forcing material to do something other than what it requires, by skill that is devoid of heart - skill that manipulates the material rather than serving its expressiveness. Such work demeans us." Bach gave us God's Word; Mozart gave us God's Laughter; Beethoven gave us God's Fire. God gave us music that we might pray without words. Soli Deo Gloria ("To God alone, the glory") Bach's personal expression of devotion, signed at the end of his manuscripts, should be our motto as well. - Don "God is the God of the rendezvous." "Every experience God gives us, every person He brings into our lives -- is perfect preparation for the future that only He can see." "Sometimes those of us in church music get distracted to the point that we are making "the Lord's music" without the Lord." "Music is the tonal analog of emotive life." "Excellence in all things and all things to God's glory" "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - Ah, that is where the art resides." "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." "We can never exhaust the multiplicity of nuances and subtleties which make the charm of music. How can we expect to produce a vital performance if we don't recreate the work every time? Every year the leaves of the trees reappear with the Spring, but they are different every time." Each musician must come to experience the dignity, rightness, and eventual joy of putting things aside, of emptying oneself and taking the form of a servant. Such musicians must be able to move back and forth, gracefully, servingly, and willingly, from the symphony to the folk tune; back and forth without complaint, compromise, or snobbery, without the conceit that doing an oratorio is somehow more worthy or more deserving than doing a hymn tune. All servant musicians must be able to be in creative transit, serving this community and challenging that one, all the while showing grace, power, elegance, and imagination. "Holy Shoddy is still shoddy!" "How often, making music we have found A new dimension in the world of sound, As worship moved us to a more profound Alleluia! Let ev'ry instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise! And may God give us faith to sing always "Alleluia!" "True worship, then, must draw us irresistibly to our Shepherd of Compassion and bid us to bow at His feet. Without the caring side of God we have no reason for hope. But without an appreciation for the sacred mystery of God, our relational emphasis too easily becomes petty and self-serving." Years ago, while presenting a piano program to senior citizens, I suggested that we have "request time." A dear woman sitting close to the front immediately asked to hear "Amazing Grace." Being certain that I could impress her, I sat down at the piano and played a rather elaborate, bombastic arrangement of that hymn. When I had finished this arrangement, I asked if there were other requests. The same woman replied, "I'm still waiting to hear "Amazing Grace!" Humbled, I sat back down at the piano and played a quieter, simpler arrangement. Though I still tried to make it artistic, my primary goal was to be sure my friend heard "Amazing Grace." When I stood back up, I noticed that the woman who had made the request now had tears in her eyes. The first time I had performed. The second time I had ministered. "Live in such a way that those who know you but don't know God will come to know God because they know you." "If you have a talent, use it in every way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dab it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke." "The book or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited." "Praise Him, every tuneful string, All the reach of heavenly art; All the powers of music bring, The music of the heart." "There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud." "When the Lord does something through us, He always transforms it." "Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring, Soar to uncreated light."
How many people are radically and permanently repelled from The Way by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boringly lifeless, obsessive, and dissatisfied! Yet such Christians are everywhere, and what they are missing is the wholesome liveliness springing from a balanced vitality within the freedom of God's loving rule. "Since God has given me a cheerful heart, He will forgive me for serving Him cheerfully." "The problem with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead." If we faithfully followed God's example, there would no longer be the crassness and cynicism of the throwaway or the false pomp and pretense of art for the ages. Nor would the Holy Spirit be continually pestered to turn poor work into blessed work. The Christian musician has no right whatsoever to assume anything other than the mind of Christ and the Creatorhood of God should guide every note composed, arranged, played, and sung. This is nothing other than good stewardship. The reason is simple: God the Creator has made it clear that function and worth, usefulness and integrity, are to be joined in every action. "I know that God will not give anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much!" "The Church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities, but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences." "Do not be grieved. The joy of the Lord is your strength." The devil dwells in the urge to control rather than liberate the human soul. One can hardly live in these closing days of the twentieth century without realizing how the forces of control have gathered. We stand by a dark forest through which fearful religious and political leaders would force us to pass in single file through their exclusive pathway of righteousness. They want to intimidate us, make us afraid, and hand over our souls to them once more. Jesus saw such shadowed forces as the corrupters of essential nature of religion in His time. They are no less so all these centuries later. "The American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith. By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived. Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love." "Can we believe in God without any passion for Him in our lives? Probably. But what's the point? Why have a faith if it isn't compelling?" "The Christian community resembles a Wall Street exchange of works wherein the elite are honored and the ordinary ignored. Love is stifled, freedom shackled, and self-righteousness fastened. The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded." "To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must forget them." "When thou prayest, better thy heart be without words Than thy words without heart." "Lord, You have been our dwelling place through all generations" - Psalm 90:1 God is not only our hiding place, He is our dwelling place. He is not merely a shelter for the night - He is our Staying Place forever. There were are not in hiding. We are at home. Some flee to Him for refuge but do not make themselves at home. They worry and doubt and fear. The Israelite who worried although the blood was on his doorpost was just as safe as the one who rested in peace - but he was not enjoying his security. We might as well settle down in God now, for the day will come when only God will remain. Our bodies, our houses, our financial security, our jobs - all these house us but temporarily and one day all of them may fail. Then if we lose all else we will still have all we ever really had. Your Hiding Place is your Dwelling Place. Make yourself at home. "Our duty is not to see through one another, but to see one another through." "We do not live by faith in God's intervention. We live by faith in God's grace when there is no intervention." Dear God, I am full of wishes, full of desires, full of expectations. Some of them may be realized, many may not, but in the midst of all my satisfactions and disappointments, I hope in You. I know that You will never leave me alone, And will fulfill Your divine promises. Even when it seems that things are not going my way, I know they are going Your way and that in the end Your way is the best way for me. O Lord, strengthen my hope, especially when my many wishes are not fulfilled. Let me never forget that Your name is Love. Amen. A Prayer for Nourishment How inarticulate are the longings of my soul, O God, Yet how acute are its pangs. How incapable am I in understanding these longings, let alone in tending them. Feed me with food, O God, that will best nourish my soul; food that will intensify rather than satisfy my love for You. Awaken every eternal seed You have planted in my soul so that while I am yet rooted in this earth something of heaven might blossom in my life. "If I say 'Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forget,' as though the God who twice a day washes all the sands on all the shores of the world, could not wash such memories from my mind, then I know nothing of Calvary love." A Creed to Live By
Do not undermine your worth by comparing yourself to others.
Do not set your goals by what other people deem important.
Do not take for granted things closest to your heart.
Do not let your life slip through your fingers
Do not give up when you still have something to give.
It is a fragile thread that binds us to each other.
Do not shut love out of your life
Do not dismiss your dreams.
Do not run through life so fast |
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