Quotes from Gordon MacDonald

when the inner garden is under cultivation and God's Spirit is present, harvests are regular events. The fruits? Things like courage, hope, love, endurance, joy, and lots of peace.

We must learn to soundproof the heart against the intruding noises of the public world in order to hear what God has to say.

We particularly need to listen to older people and children. They all have stories to tell that enrich the mind and the heart. Children simplify things, often with brutal honesty. Older people bring the perspective of their long years on issues. Suffering people also help us understand what are the truly important matters of life. There is something to learn from all people if we are only willing to sit at their feet and humble ourselves enough to ask the right questions.

People whose minds are not strengthened for endurance are by no means always unintelligent. They simply have never stopped to think that the use of the mind for the purpose of growth is a necessary part of a God-pleasing lifestyle.

It was a commitment to God. He was first on the calendar that day where He belongs every day. And it is not the sort of commitment one compromises. Not if one wants to seize time and keep it under control. It is the start of an organized day, an organized life, and an organized private world.

A public man, though he is necessarily available at many times, must learn to hide. If he is always available, he is not worth enough when he is available.

The man or woman who learns to make peace with routine responsibilities and obligations will make the greatest contributions in the long run.

There are too many people claiming to be followers of Christ who lost sight of their own sinfulness years ago. If they attend worship on Sunday, they leave without ever having had the experience of brokenness and repentance before God that indicates true worship. This leads to substandard Christianity.

If my private world is in order, it will be because Iabsorb the words of Christ into my attitudes and actions.

We are tempted to abandon prayer as a viable exercise and to try getting the results ourselves.

But what does it mean to "guard" the heart? For one thing, the writer is obviously concerned that the heart be protected from influences outside itself that might jeopardize its integrity. The writer is also focused on the strength and development of the heart in order to increase its capacity to bring order to one's life.

Although he wasn't trying to make a uniquely Christian point, I nevertheless find the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson quite provocative. "It is easy in the world," he wrote, "to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Through the years I came to realize that some of the most important insights I gained about myself came not from my friends but from my critics who, while playing rough, nevertheless alerted me to blind spots and inadequacies no one else had the courage to tell me about.

Occasionally we hear the story of an organizational leader who, having given powerful leadership to an institution, comes toward the end of his working life and keeps holding on to leadership long after he should have let it pass into the hands of someone in a younger generation. Or he ensures that the leadership passes into the hands of a son or a daughter so that he can maintain his influence.

Poor fellow, he never schools his mind by a cessation from political ruminations, the most blinding, hardening and souring of all others.

People who would never touch a drop of alcohol can be among the most serious work addicts.

Since we have not understood that rest is a necessity, we have perverted its meaning, substituting for the rest that God first demonstrated things called leisure or amusement. These do not bring any order at all to the private world. Leisure and amusement may be enjoyable, but they are to the private world of the individual like cotton candy to the digestive system. They provide a momentary lift, but they will not last.

Keep me, O Lord, from waxing mentally and spiritually dull and stupid. Help me to keep the physical, mental, and spiritual fiber of the athlete, of the man who denies himself daily and takes up his cross and follows Thee. Give me good success in my work, but hide pride from me. Save me from the self-complacency that so frequently accompanies success and prosperity. Save me from the spirit of sloth, of self-indulgence, as physical infirmities and decay creep upon me.6

Are we going to order our inner worlds, our hearts, so that they will radiate influence into the outer world? Or will we neglect our private worlds and, thus, permit the outer influences to shape us? This is a choice we must make every day of our lives.

We will know that we have learned this significant principle when we come to the point at which the development and maintenance of a strong inner world becomes the most important single function of our existences.

A DRIVEN PERSON IS GRATIFIED (AND GRATIFIED TEMPORARILY) ONLY BY ACCOMPLISHMENT.

Don't underestimate the significance of this principle. Today in our media-fashioned world many good and talented leaders face the constant temptation to begin believing the text of their own publicity releases. And if they do, a messianic fantasy gradually infects their personalities and leadership styles. Forgetting who they are not, they begin to make dangerous assumptions about who they are.

When the Christian's mind becomes dull, he can fall prey to the propaganda of a non-Christian scheme of things, led by people who have not neglected their thinking powers—and have simply outthought us.

Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones—things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour.4