"Whenever you're tempted to whine about what you don't have, remember that God has given you everything you need to do everything he wants you to do."

"The spark of passion ignites the fuel for innovation."

"If there is any group in the world that should be motivated to make improvements, reflecting God's creative nature, it should be Christians."

"With increasing passion comes increasing creativity to reach people."

"Reflecting God, innovative believers tend to have it. And it is borne out of their passion to please God, reach people, and help those in need."

"Those without it can be two-faced. Those with it are true-faced. There is no substitute for being transparent and real. The more real we are, the more likely we'll experience it."

"When we love deeply, love makes us do things we wouldn't otherwise do."

"When two parties compete, one loses. That's why in ministry, those who have it don't compete with one another; they work to complete one another."

"If you don't have something you think you need, maybe it's because God wants you to see something you've never seen."

"Seek God. Hear from God. Receive his vision. Let it overwhelm you. Consume you. Burden you. Tell the vision. Cast the vision. Communicate the vision. And watch it spread."

"Ministries that have it tend to be focused on a limited set of targets. They do a few things as if all eternity hinged on their results, and they do these things with godly excellence. Their vision is characterized by specificity. Selectivity. Exclusivity."

"Doing the wrong new things, things that usurp what God calls us to do, is dangerous. Focus tends to let it breathe. Lack of focus generally suffocates it."

"Here are a few questions to stir your vision: Why does your organization exist? What can your organization be the best in the world at? If you could do only one thing, what would it be? If you left your organization tomorrow, what would you hope would continue forever? What breaks your heart, keeps you awake at night, wrecks you?"

"The best explanation I can give of what it is, is this: it is what God does through a rare combination of these qualities found in his people: Passion for his presence; A deep craving to reach the lost; Sincere integrity; Spirit-filled faith; Down-to-earth humility; Brokenness."

"Have you ever tasted stale popcorn? The only thing worse is stale vision. If a ministry loses the vision, it's only a matter of time before they lose what made them special in the first place. Without vision, the people will quickly lose it."

"When you increase your focus, you decrease your options. Good things are not necessarily God things."

"There's a huge difference between a good idea and a God-inspired idea."

"I believe that God makes it available to anyone who wants it. I believe he wants to give it to you and your ministry."

"If you've ever been part of a ministry that had it, you knew you were part of something special. In other words, you knew it when you saw it. And it was an awesome work of God that couldn't be contained, couldn't be harnessed, and couldn't be explained."

"The first-century church in Jerusalem clearly had it. And they didn't have any fancy accoutrements. So it can't possibly be stained-glass windows, hand-carved cherubs, custom silk tapestries, gold-inlaid hymnals, thousand-pipe organs, marble floors, mile-high steeples, hand-painted ceilings, mahogany pews, giant cast-iron bells, and a three-piece, thousand dollar suit. It doesn't stick any better to a young, hip, shaved-headed pastor with rimmed glasses, a goatee, and tattoos than it does to an older, stately gentleman in a robe. Nor is it spotlights and lasers, video production, satellite dishes, fog machines, shiny gauze backdrops, four-color glossy brochures, sexy billboards, loud "contemporary" music, free donuts, coffee shops, hip bookstores, break dancing or acrobatics, sermon series named after television shows, a retro-modern matching chair and table onstage, or blue jeans and Heelys. It is not being on television, being on the Internet, or being on book and magazine covers. It is real. It is genuine."

"To have it, we have to care about those who are far from God."

"As long as you're afraid of intimacy and spiritual partnership, you won't likely experience it. To have it, you have to share it with each other. Just as there's no I in team, there's no it in independence."

"Those with it recognize that God brings it. It is not found in the things the eye can see."

"Passion creates motivation, which leads to innovation."

"When our churches look inward instead of outward, we're basically saying to nonbelievers, "You can just go to hell.""

"Be careful not to blame yourself if someone rejects Christ. If you do, you might be tempted to take credit when someone accepts him."

"Love overcomes obstacles."

"And have they fixed the where and when? And shall Trelawney die? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Shall know the reason why!"

"Christ imparts to all believers all the spiritual blessings that He is filled with, and withholds none from any that have union with Him, be these blessings never so great, or they that receive them never so weak and contemptible in outward respects. ."

"The soul that rightly receives Christ is in a longing condition; never did the hart pant for the water brooks, never did the hireling desire the shadow, never did a condemned person long for a pardon more than the soul longs for Christ."

"Christ is not sweet till sin be made bitter to us."

"It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people than one to our own hearts."

"The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated."

"As the blood of Christ is the fountain of all merit, so the Spirit is the fountain of all spiritual life; and until He quickens us, imparts the principle of divine life to our souls, we can put forth no vital act of faith to lay hold upon Jesus Christ."

"After regeneration the Spirit works upon a complying and willing mind — we work, and He assists. It is therefore an error that sanctified persons are not bound to strive in the way of duty without a sensible impulse of the Spirit."

"Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul."

"They that know God will be humble, They that know themselves cannot be proud."

"Faith, considered as a habit, is no more precious than other gracious habits are; but considered as an instrument to receive Christ and His righteousness, it excels them all; and this instrumentality of faith is noted in the phrases, "by faith," and "through faith.""

"Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles."

"There are three acts of faith, assent, acceptance, and assurance."

"We must not think that faith itself is the soul's rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation."

"Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards."

"Faith is the bond of union, the instrument of justification, the spring of spiritual peace and joy, the means of spiritual peace and subsistence."

"Two things a master commits to his servant's care — the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, "Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost." Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. "Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little.care and thought about it.""

"How much better it is to see men live exactly than to hear them argue with subtlety!"

"When a man begins to apprehend the first approach of grace, pardon, and mercy by Jesus Christ to his soul; when he is convinced of his utter unworthiness and desert of hell, and can never expect any thing from a just and holy God but damnation, how do the first dawnings of mercy melt and humble him!"

"No friend sympathizes so tenderly with his friend in affliction as does Jesus. "In all our afflictions, He is afflicted." He feels all our sorrows, wants, and burdens as His own. Whence it is that the sufferings of believers are called the sufferings of Christ."