ambition on Half-Heartedness

Indeed, there comes a time in the life of every believer and of every church where a voice inside us simply asks, Now what? After we have been introduced to Jesus and have found peace with God through...

He who opens his heart for ambition closes it for the rest.

I find it hard to be at rest and ambitious at the same time.

Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us.

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, ...

“I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’other.”

“Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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...

But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he sor’d, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

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...

Questions on the Road When we encounter today’s text, Jesus and the disciples continue to make their way from Capernaum to Jerusalem. According to Google Maps (the most trusted first century map appl...

All of us struggle with our own desires for accomplishment and ambition. Christians especially find it difficult to discern their own worldly ambitions vs. following Jesus’ comand to seek first the ki...

The soul can also manifest physical symptoms of need. I like to think of it this way: Just like my stomach growls when I’m hungry for physical food, my spirit tends to growl when I’m in need of spirit...

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

Most people think of ambition as climbing, upward mobility, always looking for step up (and willing to step on others to get it. But biblical ambition points in the other direction—the direction Chris...

Ambitions for self may be quite modest…Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. ...

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in u...

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

There’s undeniably a dark side to restless ambition, however. You can see it in dramatic fashion in the documentary  Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop , which follows the comedian on tour after he left the To...

Christian contentment… is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal and the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with a provision...

Ambition has no rest.

We grow small trying to be great.

Summary This is one of those texts where it’s pretty easy to laugh at the disciples. This is the second time Jesus told them he was going to die and then rise again after three days. And yet they wer...

In his famous 1934 campaign for the governorship of California, the author and activist Upton Sinclair took an unusual step. Before the election, he published a short book titled I, Governor of Cal...

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

When we’ve had a good year in our own kingdom, we aren’t necessarily looking for God’s Kingdom.

Savior Jesus, we confess that all too often we are incapable of looking beyond our own ambitions. We get wrapped up in prestige and position, leaving you behind for our own aspirations. Forgive our mi...

Since I was very young my life has been dominated by two strong voices. The first said, “Make it in the world and be sure you can do it on your own.” And the other voice said, “Whatever you do for the...

Harold Kushner wrote about a very bright, driven pre-med student at a very competitive college. While traveling in the East the summer before his junior year, he met a guru who said, “Don’t you see yo...