2 timothy on Ambition

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives struggling in our own burdens and failing to trust You with all the things that hold us down. Leader: Your Scripture says, "Come to Me all you who are wear...

Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no matte...

We all desire to learn from our role models, but some take this ambition to the next level. The writer Hunter S. Thompson was so obsessed with the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and specifically his...

Success is a Long Obedience, Not a Quick Climb Let me start with this: I am predisposed to believing that the ideal church size is relatively small.  Eugene Peterson has often been quoted as saying h...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’

A leader is a dealer in hope.

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...

Humble and self-forgetting we must be always, but diffident and apologetic about the gospel never.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

A documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s early twentieth-century exposition to the South Pole shows the classified ad Shackleton put in a London newspaper: Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wa...

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth.’

The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this ca...

If we see more and further than they, it is not because of our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high by their gigantic stature.

So the first and most basic task of the Christian leader in the future will be to lead his people out of the land of confusion into the land of hope. Therefore, he must first have the courage to be an...

Quite often the absence of immediate success is the mark of a genuine call., My Creator, My friend.

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

Serving at the time as provincial governor of Northern Italy, St. Ambrose was called in this capacity in 374 to the cathedral in Milan, where a riot was threatening between two rival factions of Chris...

Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever bea...

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

Gracious God, our decisions are often rooted in keeping comfortable. We keep quiet in order to protect ourselves. We give just enough to look good in front of others. We hold back to avoid pain. Yet y...

These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in cons...

A people can be judged as better or worse according to what they love, and their nation can be assessed as healthy or unhealthy according to the condition of what they love.

Gracious God, you have called us to be light in a dark world, and we have remained hidden. Thinking of ourselves first, we have withheld courage and compassion. Merciful God, hear our confessions and ...