Tony Cooke Ministries - Tony Cooke Ministries' Free Resource Area

REACTING
"Your reactions to your enemy can hurt you more than your enemy can."
- Hannah Hurnard

READING
“Reading Christians are growing Christians. When Christians cease to read, they cease to grow.”
- John Wesley

"The person who won't read has no advantage over the person who can't."
- Rev. Clifford Warren, Welsh clergyman

"Do not deny yourself the help of good books on the subject of your lessons. Buy, borrow or beg, if necessary, but obtain somehow the help of the best thinkers, enough at least to stimulate your own thought; but do not read without thinking. If possible, talk the lesson over with an intelligent friend; collision often brings light."
- John Milton Gregory

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
- Atwood H. Townsend

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
- C.S. Lewis

REALITY
“There’s nothing so tragic as the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.”
- Unknown

RECIPROCATION
We have received much by means of the efforts and sufferings of the saints in years gone by, and if we do not make some return to the church of Christ by giving her our best energies, we are unworthy to be enrolled in her ranks.
- Charles Spurgeon

REDEMPTION
“Moreover, Christ views the sinner, not as he is in himself, but as he is in the purpose of redemption. ‘His whole head is sick,’ saith Christ, ‘but I can cure him; his whole heart is faint, but I can restore him, and I will do it. His feet have gone astray, his mouth is an open sepulchre, his eyes are windows of lust, his hands are stained with blood; but I will amend all that, and make him a new creature, meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.’ Jesus looks, you see, not so much to what the sinner is in himself, as to what he can make him. He sees, in every sinner, the possibility of making a glorified saint, who shall dwell with him for ever and ever.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon

REGRET
"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it, it's only good for wallowing in."
- Katherine Mansfield

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’"
- John Greenleaf Whittier

RELATIONSHIPS
"The right to criticize must be earned, even if the advice is constructive in nature."
- James Dobson in What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Women

“Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Our navel is a constant reminder that we all started life connected to another human being. We spend all of our lives trying to get reconnected to someone. God created us as relational people.”
- Unknown

RELAXATION
"For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
- Lily Tomlin

RELEVANCE
It is said that the sermons of Augustine are in bad Latin, not because Augustine was not a good scholar, but because the dog-Latin of the day suited his turn best to get hold of men. That preaching is best which fisherwomen understand. "But the dignity of the pulpit!" says one. Well, the "dignity" of a war-chariot lies in the captives dragged at its wheels, and the "dignity of the pulpit" lies in the number of souls converted to God. You must condescend to men of low estate.

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
- William Butler Yates

REPENTANCE
“It is better to feel repentance, than to be able to define it.”
- Thomas a Kempis

“To do so no more is the truest repentance.”
- Martin Luther

True repentance hates the sin, and not merely the penalty; and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered and felt God’s love.
- W.M. Taylor

True repentance is to cease from sin.
- Ambrose of Milan

“Remorse is sorrow over being caught and the pain of consequences that follow. Repentance is not being concerned for ourselves but having a contrite heart.”
- Charles Swindoll

REPUTATION
“Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company.”
- Unknown

RESISTANCE
"Learn to say 'no.' It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin."
- Charles Spurgeon

RESPECT
“Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.”
- Albert Schweitzer

“Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.”
- Augustine

RESPECTABILITY
"Though everyone has an equal right to speak, not all have earned an equal right to be taken seriously."
Hubert Humphrey

RESPONSIBILITY
“I am rather tired of hearing about our rights...The time is come...to hear about responsibilities...”
- Peter Marshall

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”
- Henry Ward Beecher

"The price of greatness is responsibility."
- Winston Churchill

"This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that! After all, it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody because Nobody had wound up doing what Anybody could have done!"
- Author Unknown

"The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke, British Statesman

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”
- Mother Teresa

“We cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
- Abraham Lincoln

REST
“The Master knows better than to exhaust His servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.”
- Charles Spurgeon (from his book, “Lectures to My Students”)

“People mistakenly believe that if you do nothing but train you can only get better. You’ve got to work hard, but the harder you work the harder you must rest and relax.”
- Justin Gatlin (2004 Olympic Gold Medalist, 100 Meter Dash)

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

RETALIATION
"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes."
- Abigail Van Buren

REVIVAL
"Nothing that imagination can paint can make a stronger impression...Sinners dropping down on every hand, professors praying, others in raptures of joy!...There can be no question but it is of God, as the subjects...can give a clear and rational account of their conversion."- Rev Moses Hodge (Describing the happenings in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801

Gypsy Smith was once asked how to start revival. He answered: "Go home, lock yourself in your room, and kneel down in the middle of the floor. Draw a chalk mark all around yourself and ask God to start a revival inside that chalk mark. When he has answered your prayer, the revival will be on."

John Wesley was once asked how he got crowds: "I set myself on fire, and the people come to see me burn."

RIGHT
“The time is always ripe to do what is right.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

RIGHTEOUSNESS
“We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds, but having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.”
- Martin Luther

RISK
“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
- Dag Hammarskjold

“There are a lot of ways to become a failure, but never taking a chance is the most successful.”
- Unknown

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."
- James Bryant Conant

"The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from the shore."
- Dale Carnegie

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

“No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

RUDENESS
Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
- Eric Hoffer

SACRIFICE
A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.
- Martin Luther

SALVATION BY WORKS
One critic said he had gone to many churches and heard the preacher say, "Don’t try to impress God with your works" or "Don’t attempt to please God with your merits" or "Don’t try to keep the rules and regulations and thus win your way." He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, "Who’s trying?"
- Martin Marty

SANCTIFICATION
“The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, but the making of a saint is the task of a lifetime.”
- Charles Swindoll

SATAN
“The Devil’s best ruse is to persuade us that he does not exist.”
- Charles Baudelaire

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe and to feel an unhealthy interest in them!”
- C. S. Lewis

SCRIPTURE
“The authority of Scripture is greater than the comprehension of the whole of man's reason.”
- Martin Luther

SECRETS
“Recovery programs have taught us that you are only as sick as your secrets. Secrets do indeed have great power over us. When sins are kept in the dark, they take on a life of their own, creating an untenable double-life.”
- Joe Jurkowski

SECURITY
"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability."
- Henry Ford

SELF-ACCEPTANCE
"There is someone I accept even though I do not approve of all he does...and that someone is me"
- C.S. Lewis

SELF-AWARENESS
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
- Carl Jung

"When Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for President of the United States, someone asked him about his aspiration to that high office. He answered that he did not fear his opponents. "But," he said, "there is a man named Lincoln of whom I am very much afraid. If I am defeated, it will be by that man.""
- Dillard S. Miller

"I have more trouble with D.L. Moody than with any other man I know."
- D.L. Moody

SELF-CONFIDENCE
"Believe in yourself. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face… You must do that which you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

SELF-CONTROL
“I have conquered an empire, but I have not been able to conquer myself.”
- Peter the Great

"All significant battles are waged within the self."
- Sheldon Kopp

"I have more trouble with D.L. Moody than with any other man I have ever met."
- D.L. Moody

"Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up."
- George S. Patton

“You can never have a greater or lesser dominion than over yourself.”
- Leonardo DaVinci

“I count him braver who conquers his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over the self.”
- Aristotle

SELF ESTEEM
“If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say, ‘I want to be praised.’”
- E. M. Cioran

SELF-EXAMINATION
“Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish while you call upon others to take heed of perishing, and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare their food.”
- Richard Baxter (“Reformed Pastor”)

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- Socrates

SELF-PITY
“Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.”
- Millicent Fenwick

SELF SACRIFICE
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but self-sacrifice is the highest rule of grace.
- Unknown

SELF DEVELOPMENT
He can do more for others who has done most with himself.
- S.D. Gordon

SELFISHNESS
“To be selfish is to be wicked. Suppose the ocean gave up none of its watery treasure, it would bring ruin upon our race. God forbid that any of us should follow the ungenerous and destructive policy of living unto ourselves. Jesus pleased not Himself. All fulness dwells in Him, but of His fulness have all we received. O for Jesus’ spirit, that henceforth we may live not unto ourselves!”
- Charles Spurgeon

“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”
- John Andrew Holmes

"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose."
- Charles Kingsley

"Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race."
- William E. Gladstone

"The counterfeit trinity is me, myself, and I."
- Edwin Louis Cole

SENSITIVITY
"Listen to the whispers and you won't have to hear the screams."
- Cherokee Saying

SERVANTHOOD
“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You can tell whether you are becoming a servant by how you act when people treat you like one.”
- Gordon MacDonald

"The true measure of a man is not the number of servants he has, but the number of people he serves."
- Arnold Glasgow

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve."
- Albert Schweitzer

"There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being—to help someone succeed."
- Alan Loy McGinnis

SERVICE
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
- Albert Einstein

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

“Only a life lived for others is worth living.”
- Albert Einstein

“God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.”
- William Barclay

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”
- Charles Dickens

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost.”
- Arthur Ashe

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I woke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold service was joy.”
- Tagore

SERVING
“The hardest instrument in the orchestra to play is second fiddle.”
- Leonard Bernstein

Act in all things not according to your own will but as a son in the gospel. As such, it is your part to employ your time in a manner which we direct: partly in visiting the flock from house to house (the sick in particular); partly, in such a course of reading, meditation and prayer as we advise from time to time. Above all, if you labor with us in the Lord’s vineyard, it is needful you should do that part of the work which we direct, at those times and places which we judge most for his glory.
- John Wesley

SEX
"Sex has become one of the most discussed topics of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend that nothing else exists."
- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

SIGNIFICANCE
"One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in my bank account, or what my clothes looked like. But one hundred years from now the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child."
- Anonymous

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on men’s immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity."
- Daniel Webster

SIMPLICITY
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.”
- C.W. Ceram

"The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all."
- Richard J. Foster

"To simplify complications is the first essential of success."
- George Earle Buckle

“You don’t really understand something unless you can communicate it in a simple way.”
- Albert Einstein

SIN
"Sin will take you farther then you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay."
- Unknown

“Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else.”
- Chuck Smith

SINCERITY
“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is insincerity.”
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

SMALL THINGS
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
- Mother Teresa

"He does most in God’s great world who does his best in his own little world."
- Thomas Jefferson

"He is invited to do great things who receives small things greatly."
- Cassiodorus

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
- Helen Keller

SOULS
"If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for."
- Charles Spurgeon

"I would think it a greater happiness to gain one soul to Christ than mountains of silver and gold to myself."
- Matthew Henry

"I care not where I go or how I live or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts...no amount of scholastic attainment, or able and profound exposition, of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep, impassioned, sympathetic love for human souls."
- David Brainerd

“Not called,” did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of Hell and hear the damned entreat you to go to their fathers’ houses and bid their brothers and sister and servants and master not to come there. Then look Christ in the face – whose mercy you have professed to obey – and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
– William Booth

“Some men’s ambition is art, some men’s ambition is fame, some men’s ambition is gold. My ambition is the souls of men.”
– William Booth

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell.
- C.T. Studd

SOULWINNING
"I could not be satisfied unless some fruits did appear in my work."
- John Bunyan

"I care not where or how I live, or what hardships I go through, so that I can but gain souls to Christ."
- David Brainerd

"I long for the conversion of souls more sensibly than anything besides."
- Doddridge

"I would think it a greater happiness to gain one soul to Christ than mountains of silver and gold to myself."
- Matthew Henry

"If you should live to preach the gospel forty years, and be the instrument of saving only one soul, it will be worth all your labours."
- Fletcher

"How can I help weeping when you will not weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction!"
- George Whitfield

"The greatest of all things is not theology; it is not controversy; it is to save souls."
- Dr. Lyman Beecher

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES
“Too often preachers may feel the necessity of spiritual disciplines, not as a means of drawing closer to God, but as sermon insurance.”
- Ed Rowell

SPIRITUALITY
"We're not just human beings having a temporary spiritual experience. But we're spiritual beings having a temporary human experience."
- Teilhard de Chardin, French Priest

STATUS
"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like."
- Will Rogers

STEWARDSHIP
“Stewardship is the act of organizing your life so that God can spend you.”
- Lynn A. Miller

“Stewardship is what a man does after he says, ‘I believe.’”
- W. H. Greeveries

"I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity."
- David Livingstone.

"We deem it a sacred responsibility and genuine opportunity to be faithful stewards of all God has entrusted to us: our time, our talents, and our financial resources. We view all of life as a sacred trust to be used wisely."
- Moravian Covenant for Christian Living

STRESS
“The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.”
- Publius Syrus

“But did you know that some stress can be good? Think of a violin. Each string is tightened to a certain level of tension or stress, and when the stress is just right, it makes beautiful music. Overtighten, and it goes out of tune. Under-tighten, and it goes out of tune. There is a balance in which the right amount of stress tells us we’re living life at its proper speed. On one hand, we’re not being lazy, and on the other hand we’re not being overworked.”
- Dave Williams (from his book, “Emerging Leaders”)

"Most stress is caused by people who overestimate the importance of their problems."
- Michael LeBoeuf

STUDY
“If I had only three remaining years of ministry, I would spend two of them studying.”
- Donald Grey Barnhouse

SUCCESS
“The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.’”
- George Washington Carver

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
- Dale Carnegie

“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.”
- Bobby Unser

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
- Albert Schweitzer

"It takes twenty years to be an overnight success."
- Eddie Cantor

"Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that somebody will ask me, "What’s the secret of it?" I shall say simply this: "I get up when I fall down."
- Paul Harvey

"It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements."
- Walt Disney

"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity."
- O.A. Battista

"As far as I can remember, being a celebrity has never helped me make a good picture ... or command the obedience of my daughter, or impress my wife. It doesn't even seem to help keep fleas off our dog, and if being a celebrity won't give one an advantage over a couple fleas, then I guess there can't be that much in being a celebrity after all."
- Walt Disney

"The desire for fame is the last weakness wise men put off."
- Tacitus

"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value."
- Albert Einstein

The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
- Charles M Schwab

"Be awful nice to ‘em going up, because you’re going to meet them coming down."
- Jimmy Durante

"If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if you get applause, you will hear it. My advice to you concerning applause is this: Enjoy it but never quite believe it."
- Robert Montgomery

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."
- Vidal Sassoon

"Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out."
- Barbara Walters

“When you are making a success of something, it’s not work. It’s a way of life. You enjoy yourself because you are making your contribution to the world.”
- Andy Granatelli

“Success is the child of audacity.”
- Benjamin Disraeli

SUPPORTIVE ROLES
“The hardest instrument in the orchestra to play is second fiddle.
- Leonard Bernstein

SUPREMACY OF CHRIST
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! But Jesus Christ founded His upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

SURRENDER
"In our competitive world we’re taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in - so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable. Even Christians would rather talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering than yielding, submitting, obeying, and surrendering. But surrendering to God is the heart of worship."
- Rick Warren

SYSTEMS
“Your systems are perfectly designed to get the results that you are getting.”
- Stephen Covey