Why aren't we happier?

Just turn on the television, pick up the newspaper or flip through a magazine. The message is the same - buy, buy, buy! We live in an economic system of supply and demand, but for many it's never enough. The American Dream has become a nightmare of spending money we don't accumulate, use and store material possessions to improve the quality of our lives. So why aren't we happier?

Joni Eareckson Tada

try to live a Christian life without the Spirit of God

You might as well try to hear without ears or breathe without lungs, as to try to live a Christian life without the Spirit of God in your heart. D.L.Moody

Pray doesn't change God

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me."

— C.S. Lewis

I can't forgive myself

"When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's."
Timothy Keller

I need this to make me happy

"Our idols are those things we count on to give our lives meaning. They are the things of which we say, "I need this to make me happy" or "If I don't have this my life is worthless and meaningless"
Tim Keller

There is nothing wrong

There is nothing wrong to gain a lot of money, but there is something wrong to keep them as if they are my treasure, not God. AT

We are miserable...

"Self-salvation through good works may produce a great deal of moral behaviour in your life, but inside you are miserable. You are always comparing yourself to other people, and you are never sure you are being good enough. You cannot therefore, deal with your hideousness and self-absorption through the moral law, by trying to be a good person through an act of the will. You need a complete transformation of the very motives of your heart."

Reason for God - Tim Keller

How to avoid Jesus?

You can avoid Jesus as Savior by keeping all the moral laws. If you do that, then you have 'rights'. God owes you answered prayers, and a good life, and a ticket to heaven when you die. You don't need Savior who pardons you by free grace, for you are your own Savior.

Tim Keller - Prodigal God pg.37

I used everything...

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me.” Erma Bombeck

I would rather live my life...

“I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.” Albert Camus

Where is God?

"Where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him...you will be, or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.......You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence becomes." CS Lewis (in the midst of deep grief after his wife's death from cancer)

Jangan menikah dengan orang yang sempurna

Jangan menikah dengan orang yang sempurna karena jika kita menikah dengan dia maka dia akan menjadi tidak sempurna. Menikahlah dengan orang yang tidak sempurna dan berusahalah bersama-sama menuju kesempurnaan itu.

Self Control in Eating

Don't eat like tomorrow will die
but eat like tomorrow never dies. ~ AT

When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently

"Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently...Always be prepared to die....Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.....Everyone knows someone who died - so why is it so hard for us to learn how to die? Because most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do. However, facing death strips away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently."

Morrie Schwatrz, Tuesdays with Morrie

Chance is not a thing - It is nothing

“In a universe governed by God there are no chance events. Indeed, there is no such thing as chance. Chance does not exist. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. But chance itself has no power because it has no being. Chance is not an entity that can influence reality. Chance is not a thing. It is nothing.” RC. Sproul.

Half-hearted Christians

My dad used to say to me, when I was a kid, “Listen, son. Half-hearted Christians are the most miserable people of all. They know enough to feel guilty, but they haven’t gone far enough with Christ to be happy. Be wholehearted for him!” ~ Ray Ortlund

Passion for the whole truth

We can know the whole truth in the Bible but not doing even one, yet we can't do one single truth if our heart doesn't have a passion to know the whole truth. ~ Ant

Temptation is an obvious lie...

“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.” - CS Lewis

We don't give much to God

The issue that we don't give much to God not because we don't have much to give, in fact because we have too much stored up for our life as our treasure, we obsess, we possess them -- ending up we don't give God proportionally ~ Ant

I can't promise that God will change your life

I can't promise that God will change your life by reading the word of God and doing it, but I know that God can only change our life through reading the word of God and doing it. ~ Ant (inspired from one of J. Piper sermon)