Lewis B. Smedes Quotes - Page 2

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• I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain. Or they forgive fast in order to get an advantage over the people they forgive. And their instant forgiving only makes things worse... People who have been wronged badly and wounded deeply should give themselves time and space before they forgive... There is a right moment to forgive. We cannot predict it in advance; we can only get ourselves ready for it when it arrives... Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Pain, Order

  24 Copy quote

• The longer we hate, the harder it is to heal us.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Hate, Bitterness, Heal

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• Forgiving is tough. Excusing is easy. What a mistake it is to confuse forgiving with being mushy, soft, gutless, and oh, so understanding. Before we forgive, we stiffen our spine and we hold a person accountable. And only then, in tough-minded judgment, can we do the outrageously impossible thing: we can forgive.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Mistake, Impossible Things, Understanding

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• The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Heart, Hands, Grace

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• It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Inspirational, Forgiveness, Letting Go

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• Happy people are not their own enemies, do not carry on an endless war with their souls. We may be fiercely at odds with the wrongs of the world around us. But inside ourselves, near the core, if we are happy, we are at peace.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Happiness, Peace, War

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• The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Pain, Revenge, Ties

  "Why Charging People With Homicide For Overdose Deaths Is Revenge And Not Justice" by Brooke M. Feldman, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2017.

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• Self control is about being in charge of the direction our lives are taking. Now for the paradox: We get control of our lives, ultimately, not by will power but by surrender.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Self, Surrender, Paradox

  Lewis B. Smedes (2002). “A Life of Distinction: What It Takes to Live with Courage, Honesty, and Gratitude”, Shaw

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• None of us wants to admit that we hate someone... When we deny our hate we detour around the crisis of forgiveness. We suppress our spite, make adjustments, and make believe we are too good to be hateful. But the truth is that we do not dare to risk admitting the hate we feel because we do not dare to risk forgiving the person we hate.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Hate, Believe

  31 Copy quote

• The problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes. The chain reaction set off by every act of vengeance always takes its unhindered course. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain...Why do family feuds go on and on?...the reason is simple: no two people, no two families, ever weigh pain on the same scale.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Pain, Revenge

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• Don't do it quickly, but don't wait too long... If we wait too long to forgive, our rage settles in and claims squatter's rights to our souls.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Rights, Long

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• The first and often only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness... When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiving, Doe, Firsts

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• If we say that monsters [people who do terrible evil] are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have...they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Hurt, Memories

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• I have discovered that most people who tell me that they cannot forgive a person who wronged them are handicapped by a mistaken understanding of what forgiving is.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, People, Understanding

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• Human sexuality includes more than hormones, organs, and orgasms; it runs through the psychic and spiritual ranges of our lives. We experience our sexuality on the spiritual level as a yearning for another person. We want to reach out and stretch ourselves into the depths of another. We want to bring the other person into the orbit of our deepest selves. We want to probe into the mystery of the other.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Running, Spiritual, Self

  Lewis B. Smedes (1976). “Sex for Christians: the limits and liberties of sexual living”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

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• Once we have forgiven, however, we get a new freedom to forget. This time forgetting is a sign of health; it is not a trick to avoid spiritual surgery. We can forget because we have been healed. But even if it is easier to forget after we forgive, we should not make forgetting a test of our forgiving. The test of forgiving lies with healing the lingering pain of the past, not with forgetting the past has ever happened.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Spiritual, Pain, Lying

  33 Copy quote

• When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Letting Go, Evil

  40 Copy quote

• I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Gratitude, Joy, Feelings

  "A Life of Distinction: What It Takes to Live with Courage, Honesty, and Gratitude".

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• How many times should you forgive your household bruiser? You should not even think about forgiving him. Not yet. Not as long as he has his foot on your neck. Your problem at this point is not forgiving. Your problem is how to get out of his reach. Once you get away from him, you can think about forgiving him.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Thinking, Feet

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• Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Memories, Healing

  "Healing by Degrees" by Jean-Paul Bedard, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 1, 2014.

  24 Copy quote

• ...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Understanding, Forgiving

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• To miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Happiness, Joy, Missing

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• Forgiving is an affair strictly between a victim and a victimizer. Everyone else should step aside...The worst wounds I ever felt were the ones people gave to my children. Wrong my kids, you wrong me. And my hurt qualifies me to forgive you. But only for the pain you caused me when you wounded them. My children alone are qualified to forgive you for what you did to them.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Hurt, Pain

  16 Copy quote

• The moments of grace usually give us more than one good thing we can do, and we do well if we manage a pretty good batting average. ... It is an opportunity that God sews into the fabric of a routine situations - It is a chance to do something creative, something helpful, something healing, something that makes one unmarked spot in the world better off for our having been there.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Healing, Opportunity, People

  "A Life of Distinction: What It Takes to Live with Courage, Honesty, and Gratitude".

  9 Copy quote

• If you cannot free people from their wrongs and see them as the needy people they are, you enslave yourself to your own painful past and by fastening yourself to the past, you let your hate become your future.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Hate, Past, People

  10 Copy quote

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