^{Self-deception helps us deceive.
~ David Livingstone}

Reflect, Resonate, Reevaluate, Respond

^{Which ‘R’ is most important and why?}

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others… but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God “sending us” to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
~ C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963, British writer and apologist

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
~ Yogi Berra, 1925-2015, baseball catcher & manager

~~~~~~~~ Matthew 13:24-30 ~~~~~~~~

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or by actively doing evil. … Without action in the world, the adoration of God is empty and hypocritical, and degenerates into irresponsible and godless quietism.
~ Miroslav Volf, Reflections on a Christian Way of Being-in-the-World

Many of us struggle to know exactly what to pack when we go on our various travels. The Pilgrims in their voyage to the new world were no different.
It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip, They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. One William Mullins packed 126 pairs of shoes and thirteen pairs of boots. Yet they failed to bring a single cow or horse, plow or fishing line.
~ Bill Bryson, 1951- , journalist & author of Made in America

Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don’t hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.
~ Billy Sunday, 1862-1935, baseball player & evangelist

Self-deception can be more comforting than self-knowledge. We like to fool ourselves.
~ Russ Roberts, 1954- , known for communicating economic ideas in understandable terms

Luke 8: 4-18

Reflections:

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart. ~ Winnie the Pooh

Instead of a call to the King and His kingdom, people are hearing a gospel that emphasizes self: come to Jesus and get this or that need met, be personally fulfilled, reach your potential. ~ John Wimber, 1934-1997, early leader of vineyard movement

Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you. ~ Augustine of Hippo, 354-430, from his Confessions

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that is “finding his place in it,” while really it is finding its place in him.
~ C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963, English writer and lay theologian

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945, from the book ‘Life Together’

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
~ Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer, poet, essayist

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821-1881, Novelist, essayist, journalist