Craig D. Lounsbrough

I take my cues from the world around me and carefully paint a self-portrait that the world can__ help but accept. However, I would be much wiser to put down all such artistic notions and hold up the portrait of me painted by God simply because that is a picture at which the world can__ help but marvel.

The death of our self-worth begins at its appraisal, for such an action erroneously implies that our worth can be quantified.

The thing that I__ most likely to collapse under is not the weight of the stresses that stand around me, but the ego that sits within me.

Ego is borne of the need to __rove_ oneself instead of making the choice to __e_ oneself. And so maybe we need to begin curbing the birthrate.

If I can__ quite figure out what an ego is, all I have to do is look for the thing that__ killing itself in the very act of feeding itself.

If I__ my biggest fan, the only person in the stadium is probably me.

I can confidently state that the greatest rescues in my life have occurred when I__e been saved from myself.

To save myself I must face myself, which may be the hardest of all things to face.

Who you are is too vast to be captured by the reflection of a mirror, classified by the state of your attitude, or categorized by the opinions of others. Therefore, if any of these are defining you, you have yet to be defined.

If it__ about me, I can be assured that there will be a bunch of empty chairs in the auditorium of my life; save the one I__ sitting in.

If it has anything to do with me, it has nothing to do with sacrifice.

Whatever the item is that I have chosen to give you, it is nothing more than the receptacle within which I have placed the whole of myself. If it is empty, it is not a gift.

Calm for too long begs the question of whether we're in an all-out pursuit of life, or we're all-out of the pursuit of life.

Without unreservedly surrendering myself to God, whatever place I might raise myself to remains nothing more than a step or possibly two off the hard basement floor of life, for of myself I can be utterly assured that I will never step out of the basement.

Every advancing step I take toward my goal of comfort is yet another retreating step I take away from God's goal of the impossible.

I am what no one else is, and in the hands of God I can do what no one else does. And if I dare set such a truth in motion I will change my world.

How often do I stand in abject terror and raw trepidation before the impossible peaks that soar to impossible heights in front me, when God turns to me and calmly says __hat mountains?

I would surmise that we must cherish the resources that God has given us to achieve a goal more than we cherish the goal itself. For if we fall victim to the pursuit of the goal alone, then the goal has suddenly become our god.