159 Quotes by Chuck Swindoll

Encourage one another. Many times a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept people on their feet.

Servants must be big people. Big enough to go on, remembering the right and forgetting the wrong.

Our minds can be kept free of anxiety as we dump the load of our cares on the Lord in prayer.

I believe firmly in God's control in life.

It is easy for Christians to have the false impression that once we have established a relationship with Christ, which we believe sets us right with God, the problems of life will somehow scoot away or they will slowly be removed from our lives.

For there to be true maturity, people must be given room to grow, which includes room to fail.

We aren't just thrown on this earth like dice tossed across a table. We are lovingly placed here for a purpose.

Rejoicing is clearly a spiritual command. To ignore it, I need to remind you, is disobedience.

Only grace-large doses, frequently displayed, released-will restore the wounded.

Worry erases the promises of God from your mind.

Today is unique! It has never occurred and it will never be repeated. At midnight it will end, quietly, suddenly, totally. Forever. But the hours between now and then are opportunities with eternal possibilities.

I want to preach till the last breath in my lungs runs out.

Please, put aside all excuses and ask yourself, What should I be doing? Yes, you alone can make a difference. The question is, will you?

While I was raised around churches and had gotten to know a few preachers fairly well, the thought never entered my head that I would one day stand and deliver. Not only was I not interested, I lived with a major struggle: I stuttered.

God never calls His people to accomplish anything without promising to supply their every need.

Like sin itself, Satan appeals to the senses. He originated and perfected the art of disguising evil as good.

Those who feed on rumors are small, suspicious souls.

There can be no more reliable authority on earth than God's Word, the Bible. This timeless, trustworthy source of truth holds the key that unlocks life's mysteries. It alone provides us with the shelter we need in times of storm.

Faith does not change my circumstances; faith changes me. Faith may not bring in the tuition check when I need it, but faith will give me what it takes to hang on.

'We really shouldn't look like a church.' I've heard that so much I want to vomit. 'Why?' I ask. 'Do you want your bank to look like a bank? Do you want your doctor's office to look like a doctor's office, or would you prefer your doctor to dress like a clown?'

Envy is one of the great enemies of active spirituality. It keeps us from loving our neighbours, from functioning with others in community, and from affirming people's unique worth. It also steals contentment from the heart. Is there anything or anyone you are envious of?

Some folks serve the almighty dollar far more faithfully than the Almighty God. They get greater delight out of balancing the budget than watching the Lord multiply the loaves and fishes.

Make a plan now to keep a daily appointment with God. The enemy is going to tell you to set it aside, but you must carve out the time. If you're too busy to meet with the Lord, friend, then you are simply too busy.

You will find a common dichotomy in life. Those who don't have vision or determination, and refuse to dream the impossible, are always in the majority.

There is nothing more fearful for the average person in our society than to stand before a group of people and speak.

We need discernment in what we see and what we hear and what we believe.

Laughter is the most beautiful and beneficial therapy God ever granted humanity.

Without a quest, life is quickly reduced to bleak black and wimpy white, a diet too bland to get anybody out of bed in the morning. A quest fuels our fire. It refuses to let us drift downstream gathering debris.

The crisis of physical hunger is essentially a crisis of faith. What or whom will you trust to meet your most basic needs? Will you trust the God who made human bodies, or will you seek your own way? (Deuteronomy 8:1-3).

If God awarded us medals, as they do in the Olympics, love would win the gold, joy the silver, and peace the bronze.

I am often the brunt of my own humor.

Noise and crowds have a way of siphoning our energy and distracting our attention, making prayer an added chore rather than a comforting relief.

While I wholeheartedly believe in choosing to approach every challenge with a great attitude, I don't mean that we should abandon authenticity and live in fantasyland.

Allowing anger to seethe on the back burner will lead to a very large lid blowing off a very hot pot.

It takes faith to find personal significance in your relationship with God rather than how much money you earn, how beautiful you look, how many toys you own, how many trophies you collect, or how much territory you conquer and control.

GRACE: All you can do is take it.

Only you can determine your choice of attitude. Choose wisely, choose carefully, choose confidently!

The best tests of my Christian growth occur in the mainstream of life, not in the quietness of my study.

Christlikeness is a journey, not a destination. The joy is in the journey.

We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for the day. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. Our attitude is everything.

Every one of us can blame somebody for something that has happened in our lives. But don't waste your time. What we need most is a steady stream of love flowing among us. Love that quickly forgives, willingly overlooks, and refuses to take offense.

Another problem with worry is that it makes you forget your worth. Worry makes you feel worthless, forgotten, and unimportant.

If you aren't vigilant, if you aren't daily humbling yourself before Him, seeking His face, discerning His timing, operating under the Spirit's control, you may push and shove and force your way prematurely into that place where God wanted you, but you will not have arrived in His own time.

Don't get older; get better: Live realistically. Give generously. Adapt willingly. Trust fearlessly. Rejoice daily.

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yourself.

If you life is an example of glorifying God, others won't see your good works and glorify YOU, because they'll know what you are doing is for God's glory.

Which should be an excellent reminder that when God tells you to do something, you'd better do it; He always has a reason.

When God's in it, the job gets done.

Know yourself, like yourself, be yourself.

Anxious. Intriguing word. It literally means, to be divided or distracted. It conveys the idea of being so mentally ill at ease that you cannot do what you need to do because you are so distracted in your thinking.

Do you need strength? Peace? Wisdom? Direction? Discipline? Ask for it! God will hear you.

Excellence-moral, ethical, personal excellence-is worth whatever it costs.

Precious few are those who can live in the lap of luxury ... who can keep their moral, spiritual and financial equilibrium ... while balancing on the elevated tightrope of success. ... there is about one in a hundred who can dance to the tune of success without paying the piper named Compromise.

God does not dispense strength and encouragement like a druggist fills your prescription. The Lord doesn't promise to give us something to take so we can handle our weary moments. He promises us Himself. That is all. And that is enough.

Thanksgiving is a time of quiet reflection; an annual reminder that God has, again, been ever so faithful. The solid and simple things of life are brought into clear focus.

God has somehow placed into Christian's insides a special something, that extra inner reservoir of power that is more than a match for the stuff life throws at us.

Adversity is a good test of our resiliency, our ability to cope, to stand back up, to recover from misfortune. Adversity is a painful pedagogue.

A godly person is one who ceases to be self-centered in order to become God-centered.

We must cease striving and trust God to provide what He thinks is best and in whatever time He chooses to make it available. But this kind of trusting doesn't come naturally. It's a spiritual crisis of the will in which we must choose to exercise faith.

When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you're right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss.

Many seducers clutter the simple message of the gospel with legalistic additions, with convoluted attempts to legitimize moral compromise, and with psychological theories that turn churches into relational support groups instead of houses of worship.

God's word is tailor-made for gray-slush days. It sends a beam of light through the fog. It signals safety when we fear we'll never make it through.

Patience is a bitter plant that produces sweet fruit.

God doesn't work on our timetable. He has a plan that He will execute perfectly and for the highest, greatest good of all, and for His ultimate glory.

It's a delightful thing to receive a good word just at your time of need. Encourage someone today.

If you are having difficulty loving or relating to an individual, take him to God. Bother the Lord with this person. Don't you be bothered with him -- leave him at the throne.

On tough days, you gotta have heart. Don't quit, whatever you do. Persevere.

We gain the ability to rejoice under pressure through a carefully monitored training program directed by the Lord Himself.

I don't have to explain or defend the will of God. My job is simply to obey it.

No one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. Lust is never very far away. And just when you least expect it, there it is again.

No, the thing that makes for greatness is determination, persisting in the right direction over the long haul, following your dream, staying at the task.

The single most important issue in all of life (is) your relationship with the living God... how you can know Him in a personal and meaningful way.

I have no interest in returning to yesteryear. I love the conveniences and delights of today's time. I wouldn't go back if I could.

No pressure is greater than God's power.

Let your life yield a sweet, winsome melody that this old world needs so desperately. Yes you can if you will.

Discipline is training that corrects and perfects our mental faculties or molds our moral character. Discipline is control gained by enforced obedience. It is the deliberate cultivation of inner order.

Go God's way! His is the most reliable route to follow when life gets complicated. It will have its tough moments, but you will never regret it.

God has called His creation to find satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him, and stop trying to manage the world by conforming it to our expectations, and to allow Him to govern His creation. He continues to say through an ancient Hebrew worship song, Be still and know that I am God!

Leaders need to cultivate two things: a righteous heart and a rhinoceros skin.

When we arrive at dilemmas in life and we are unable to decipher the right direction to go, if we hope to maintain our confidence in the process, we must (repeat must) allow the Lord to be our Guide, our Strength, our Wisdom -- our all!

Next time you're faced with a credit-purchase decision, wait. Don't say no necessarily. Just wait. I challenge you to present your need to the Lord before presenting it to a bank, and see what He does with it.

Focusing intently on Christ naturally results in a lifestyle of increasingly greater selflessness. And it has another benefit. Gazing on Christ gives us greater ability to look past life's trials and remain calm in the midst of what others would call chaos.

If the pace and the push, the noise and the crowds are getting to you, it's time to stop the nonsense and find a place of solace to refresh your spirit.

Dream big ... don't let anybody or anything break your wishbone. Stay strong, full of faith, and courageous... keep that backbone straight. And along the way, don't forget to laugh and enjoy the journey.

When you pray, pray so that you may know Him. When you seek to simplify, do it as a means of knowing Him more. When you surrender, or behave with humility or sacrifice, do it with the sole purpose in mind to know Him.

You won't find God at the Seminary and you won't find wisdom in the halls of intellectualism.

It is a pity that many Christians have the TV schedule better memorized than a single chapter for God's precious Word.

Learning more truth is a poor and cheap substitute for stopping and putting into action the truth already learned.

I have tried and I cannot find, either in scripture or in history, a strong-willed individual whom God used greatly until He allowed them to be hurt deeply.

Battles are won in the trenches, in the grit and grime of courageous determination; they are won day by day in the arena of life.

An anniversary says, Think of the dreams you have weathered together. They are intimate accomplishments.

Consistency: It's the jewel worth wearing; It's the anchor worth weighing; It's the thread worth weaving; It's a battle worth winning.

Nothing is more bothersome to me than retiring. Weird things happen when you disengage; first you get negative, then you start telling people about your latest surgeries, and eventually you lose touch. I want to stay in touch.

Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hopes. When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.

How important is the heart! It is there that character is formed. It alone holds the secrets of true success. It's treasures are priceless -- but they can be stolen.

When a church is spending more of its budget on media than shepherding, something is out of whack. We have gotten things twisted around.

Vision encompasses vast vistas outside the realm of the predictable, the safe, the expected.

People who soar, are those who refuse to sit back and wish things would change.

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.

Sin may have the power to kill and destroy, but God is the Creator of life. He can create it from nothing, and He can restore it from death.(John 11:25-26).