The Top 5 Most Impactful Quotes In My Life

Top 5 lists can be fun. What are the top 5 places you want to visit? What 5 people have influenced you the most in your life? Who are the 5 people with whom you would like to eat lunch? Some of my friends and I almost always end up discussing a Top 5 list when we are together. Today I am considering a new Top 5.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” - C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

"A true apology never asks to be excused, but forgiven. A true apology never defends, but admits." - Roger (my supervisor in my counseling internship)

"There is an unhealthy extreme to everything except loving God." - Pete Kidder (a longtime friend)

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." - C. S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian

"One of the great uses of twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the last day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time." - John Piper's twitter, Oct. 20, 2009

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." - C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way." - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?"

HONORABLE MENTIONS

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. … Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
 - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch." - Tim Keller, The Reason for God

"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him” - John Piper

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." - Mother Teresa
If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” - John Piper, A Hunger for God

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." - C. S. Lewis

"If the Lord fails me at this time, it will be the first time." - George Mueller, Obstacle To Comfort: The Faith Ministry of George Müller

"Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, or recognition. We live for what we believe.” - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

And last, but certainly not least…my dad. He was coaching my basketball team and told us this quote during a team meeting. I have never forgotten it.

"If you can't be on time, be early!" - Seth Berl
I tried to go for only five, but there are too many great ones that I have come across over the years that have stayed with me. I hope you were encouraged as you read.