Okay! So I blog about being overwhelmed, stepping back from my blog for a bit, and the pressing need I have to finish and edit my novel before the American Christian Fiction Writers convention in mid-September only to be “tagged” for a “viral quote meme” by 
fellow professional writer (and drummer) Matt Self of The Gad(d)about.
In light of this, all I can think of in response to my first blogosphere tagging is that XFL player who had a jersey that read “He hate me.” Matt, I’m considering sending you one of those if I can find it. 😉
Now as a writer you would think that I would have a plethora of quotes to draw from, but the kind of writing I do never calls for that. As a result, the number of quotes I have saved over the years is pitifully small and usually relegated to those from the eminently quotable Leonard Ravenhill, A.W. Tozer, and Edmund Burke. I keep track of a few great novel lines, but beyond that I’m bereft of witticisms that folks haven’t heard a million times before. And quoting Monty Python doesn’t count, either.
So with that I unleash upon you all my few favorite quotes from my limited source of quote references. Enjoy them—if you can:
Leonard Ravenhill
I doubt that more than two percent of professing Christians in the United States are truly born again.
The only time you can really say that “Christ is all I need,” is when Christ is all you have.
If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.
You never have to advertise a fire.
One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed.
No man is greater than his prayer life.
A.W. Tozer
The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are not worthy of Him.
One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.
Nowhere in the Word of God is there any text or passage that can be tortured or twisted into teaching that the organic living church of Jesus Christ just prior to His return will not have every right and every power and every obligation that she knew in that early part of the book of Acts.
Edmund Burke
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
G.K. Chesterton
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Jim Elliot
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Vogon ships hung in the air in the same way that bricks don’t.
Neuromancer, William Gibson
The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.
And now my tagging is complete. Am I supposed to inflict this viral plague on some other poor soul now? (Netiquette has never been my bread and butter.) If so, I tag Oengus Moonbones of Lunar Skeletons, Milton Stanley of Transforming Sermons, and Tim Challies of Challies.com. Now those three can also say of me, “He hate me.” (And I’m not even going to e-mail them, either. We’ll see if they are reading….)
When the first person who reads your book says, “Hey, didn’t I read that in Meat for Men?” then you can blame it on me. Until then, you know you were looking for some distraction. =)
Good stuff, Dan. I knew I picked the right guy! BTW, I secretly tagged Brian Colmery at http://colmery.blogspot.com and the kid came through.
Finding the old Ravenhill books is getting harder and harder. My father-in-law had a copy of Meat for Men and I nearly cried when I found it. Still, 99% of my Ravenhill stuff comes from tapes and MP3s I’ve collected over the years. He is by far and away my favorite preacher to listen, too. Even in his eighties he was on fire. I had a chance to see him locally before he passed away and I nearly beat my head against the wall when I wrote down the wrong day for his appearance on my calendar and never caught the mistake. How stupid am I, really?
I love Tozer, too. He and Ravenhill were friends, can you believe it? Sure Tozer was a lot older, but still there was a mutual admiration there. Between the two of them I can’t think of anyone I trust more that I could say to someone, “Read and listen to everything they’ve said and you’ll always be blessed.” Truth is hard to come by these days and these two knew Truth.