Quotes from Gordon T. Smith

The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest but wholeheartedness... we are typically exhausted because we are not doing our TRUE work.

Nothing is so fundamental to the spiritual life as learning to give thanks.

Richard Lovelace's book Dynamics of Spiritual Life

the wisdom of spiritual direction is precisely that we refuse to stand between God and the person who so needs to hear God for himself, for herself.

To put it bluntly, people who are out of touch with their emotions are out of touch with God, for God speaks to us through the ebb and flow of our emotional lives.

We can challenge and encourage one another, but we cannot live the Christian life or respond to the convicting ministry of the Spirit for one another.

Good work requires of us an appreciation of the value of routine, ordinary, mundane rhythms of doing what needs to be done, each day and each week, thoroughly and with care.

Something is askew when our passion for the truth blinds us to other perspectives and to the grace to be able to differ graciously from others and learn from others who may see things very differently than we do.

For many, hectic activity provides a kind of perpetual adrenalin rush. Often those consumed by busyness feel as though this pattern of life and work legitimizes them. They feel important; they feel needed; they feel alive. However, they have a false sense of life and importance, and eventually it leaves them feeling hollow. It

each transition will involve some kind of loss. Growth will always be costly; a new venture will always involve some form of letting go. It may be a matter of separation—from parents or from those who are part of an old way or an old world. It may involve leaving behind the comfortable and the secure. Each transition will be a small death, and the new life, the new opportunity and the new challenge will only come as we let go.

Part of the reason why we feel these transitions so keenly is that we know that our lives matter.