Stephen Mansfield Quotes & Sayings

a man cannot fulfill his purpose if he is living for applause, approval, and affirmation in this world. It simply will not come - not enough, certainly, to answer the needs of his soul. — Stephen Mansfield

Depend upon it, behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily. — Stephen Mansfield

Every Christian has a capacity for the most magnificent Christlikeness. Yet, every Christian also has the potential to commit the most disgusting and horrible acts of the flesh. — Stephen Mansfield

David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: "I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man." These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget. — Stephen Mansfield

If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him. — Stephen Mansfield

By doing rather than merely studying, we create a culture. Newcomers and the young feed on that culture. They watch. They do. They, too, are changed. Our culture expands. You Americans create a system of thought. The most you ask is that people contemplate new ideas. You might ask them to give or to sometimes attend meetings, but no contagious culture is created. Nothing is offered to newcomers and the young but thoughts. So they think. They don't do." We are changed. We craft — Stephen Mansfield

A banker can be as called and as pleasing to God as Billy Graham may be when he preaches. A brewer can serve as valuable a role in the kingdom of God as a missionary, a priest, or a pope. This is the truth of Christianity and this, too, is a core truth of the Guinness story. — Stephen Mansfield

I want to identify what a genuine man does - the virtues, the habits, the disciplines, the duties, the actions of true manhood - and then call men to do it. — Stephen Mansfield

we will never become the men we are called to be unless we learn the art of friendship and intentionally cultivate deep, meaningful, rowdy relationships with other men. — Stephen Mansfield

Honorable men refuse to wallow in the small and the bitter. Honorable men refuse to hate life because something once went wrong. Honorable men don't build monuments to their disappointments, nor do they let others brand them and curse them to their destruction. Honorable — Stephen Mansfield

There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice. — Stephen Mansfield

But the truth is, when it comes to emotional pain - the pain that registers inside - the greatest damage is often the thing that continues to resonate when the feeling of the pain subsides. It is that message that the pain tells us about ourselves and about the meaning of our lives. — Stephen Mansfield

declare war on those parts of themselves that keep them from exceptional lives. — Stephen Mansfield

Here is where it leads us. And let me make this clear: there is nothing that happened in that wounding experience with that church that is worth what is happening to you now. — Stephen Mansfield

The Kurds know - and never for a moment forget - what most people in the world have never understood. The nation of Iraq is not a centuries-old country with natural boundaries and an organically blended population. Instead, Iraq is a structure of artificial boundaries and unnaturally combined tribes and religions conceived by Europeans just after World War — Stephen Mansfield

Your destiny is fulfilled as you invest in the destinies of others. — Stephen Mansfield

All it takes for a contagious manly culture to form is for one genuine man to live out genuine manhood. It creates a model, something for other men to feed upon and pattern themselves after. It also gives other genuine men a vital connection that sustains and extends who they are. — Stephen Mansfield

Prophets (must) humbly accept the truth that they see through a glass darkly, that they know only in part. In other words, they make mistakes. Mature prophets urge everyone to who they prophesy to judge, test and compare with scripture everything they say. They are not offended when people are careful. — Stephen Mansfield

Small things done consistently, though undramatic, yield more than the large and sporadic. — Stephen Mansfield

Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain. — Stephen Mansfield

God is God, and I'm not. — Stephen Mansfield

Beer, well respected and rightly consumed, can be a gift of God. It is one of his mysteries, which it was his delight to conceal and the glory of kings to search out. And men enjoy it to mark their days and celebrate their moments and stand with their brothers in the face of what life brings. — Stephen Mansfield

Your horrific time of trouble offered you truths about yourself, windows into your own soul, and maps to the terrain of your inner life. Wise people learn to gather this intelligence to help them conquer themselves and then to live in loftier ways. — Stephen Mansfield

Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly - our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man. — Stephen Mansfield

Historians Will and Ariel Durant have written in The Story of Civilization: The Reformation that at the time of Luther, "a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns." This may help to explain why beer figures so prominently in the life and writings of the great reformer. He was German, after all, and he lived at a time when beer was the European drink of choice. Moreover, having been freed from what he considered to be a narrow and life-draining religious legalism, he stepped into the world ready to enjoy its pleasures to the glory of God. For Luther, beer flowed best in a vibrant Christian life. — Stephen Mansfield

Honorable men don't settle for lives of regret. — Stephen Mansfield