I’ve been told that I’m an incurable optimist. It is true that I have tried to look at life as if “the glass is half full” vs. half empty. It’s something I’ve had to work at throughout my life.
I was told at an early age by my pastor, “Learn to associate with positive thinkers and disassociate with negative thinkers.” Over the years I discovered that one of my spiritual gifts was encouragement. I found joy in lifting the spirits of others. That led me to venturing into motivational speaking and preaching.
My personal mission statement has guided me most of my adult life. I enjoy inspiring people and giving them hope. Below are some of my favorite quotes & phrases. Check back from time to time for an update as I continue to add to my list.
David Burrier
Your Hope Coach
- “You act the way you do, because you think the way you do. If further explanation is needed none will suffice.”
- “What you think in your mind you produce in your experience.” — James Allen
- “Situation is the boss.”
- “Life is all in how you choose to look at it.” — David Burrier
- “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” — Jim Rohn
- “No matter how good or bad you think your life is, try to wake up each morning and be thankful for life. It’s easier think about the fact that someone else somewhere is fighting to survive
- “Pain is real, but so is hope.”
- “When we learn from the experiences of others we compress time.”
- “Situation is the boss.”
- “If He expects you to live through it, He will direct you how to do it.” — Tamara Scott
- “If you were involved in a trial to convict Christians would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
- “Only in the dictionary does success come before work.”
- “Faith comforts a terrified mind.” — Roger Fears
- “Life doesn’t have to be perfect for you to be at peace.” — David Burrier
- “Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can survive a period of darkness with the hope of a new and beautiful life ahead.”
- “When life gets too hard to stand, kneel.” — Tony Evans
- “Something will grow from all you are going through. And it will be you.” — Toby Mac
- “It’s a page in your book but it’s not the end.”
- “Change the way you look at things and you’ll find the things you look at change.”
- “Among some of the happiest memories are also agonizing ones. But even in the midst of grief, beauty can appear. If you keep your heart open to God through trying times, hope can grow alongside pain and grief, like wild flowers blooming in the desert.” — Carol Anne Alexander, Wild Hope
- “You can survive 40 days without food, 4 days without water, 4 minutes without oxygen, but nobody can live the next 4 seconds without hope.”
- “If you can’t find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” — Frank A. Clark
- “There are some of your graces which would never be discovered if it were not for your trials.” — Charles Spurgeon
- “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” — C. S. Lewis
- “It’s in your broken places where you are most often used by God.” — Christine Caine
- “Obedience in the ordinary provides the foundation for the extra ordinary. There’s power in persistence.” — Rev. Gary Pilcher, Berean Assembly of God Church in Pleasant Hill, IA
- “There are two types of pain. One that hurts you and the other that changes you.”
- “Perhaps it’s the troubled waters where we find the greatest blessings in our lives. Perhaps it’s the storms that teach us the best lessons in life. Perhaps it’s the tests that gift us our testimonies. Perhaps it’s the messes in our lives that inspire our messages.”
- “Either way, God is good and He is faithful!” — David Burrier
- “I’ve never met a strong person with an easy past.” — Marcee M. Turner
- “When things come against you it is quite possible that God has prepared something ahead for you.”
- “One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing to walk away or try harder.”
- “A greater good often comes from circumstances that at first don’t appear good.”
- “For God to use our painful experiences we must be willing to share them.” — Rick Warren
- “You’re not rich until you have something money can’t buy.”
- “Grace isn’t given so you can strive and struggle to live a perfect life, but so you can begin to enjoy living your imperfect life.” — Michael Welchert
- “It may be a page in your book that causes you strife, but remember it’s not the end of your book yet.”
- “Sometimes it’s good to quit trying to hold on and try just being held.”
- “Don’t underestimate the power and influence of your personal testimony.”
- “Sometimes God closes doors because it’s time to move forward because He knows you won’t move unless your circumstances force you. Trust the transition. God’s got you!“
- “Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. Faith is the belief that God will do what is right for you.” — Max Lucado
- “Worry has never brightened a day, solved a problem or cured a disease.” — Max Lucado
- “It is not joy that makes us grateful. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.”
- “In the storm is where our faith grows.”
- “I may be in this fire, but I know who controls the thermostat.”
- “I’m not a whiner — I’m a warrior.”
- “Your pain will lead to your gain.”
- “Don’t just go through it — grow through it.”
- “If life brings you to it — God will bring you through it.”
- “God can take your mess and turn it into your message.”
- “The pain is for a greater purpose.”
- “Not a victim but a victor.”
- “I don’t have to understand it to trust Him.”
- “Your test can become your testimony.”
- “Can God trust you with the pain?”
- “What if your journey was for the purpose of bringing only one to Christ? Would you be willing to go through it again?”
- “Yesterday you cannot alter, but your reaction to yesterday you can. Your past you cannot change, but your response to your past you can.” — Max Lucado
- “When asked to recall a time of tremendous spiritual growth… hardly anybody would describe a time when everything was good and life was easy.”
- “Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys.” — Rev. Billy Graham
- “When the train goes through a tunnel and the world gets dark, do you rip up your ticket and jump out? Of course not; You sit still and trust the engineer to get you through.” — Corrie ten Boom
- “What really matters is what happens in us — not to us.”
- “When something is happening to us you can be sure that God is doing something in us!”
- “In darkness, God’s truth shines more clear.”
- “A person who falls and gets back up is stronger than a person who never fell.”
- “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein
- “One of the greatest challenges in life is discovering who you are. The second greatest challenge is being happy with what you find.”
- “When you’re going through something hard and you wonder where God is, remember the teacher is always quiet but present during the test.”
- “It will be alright in the end. And if it is not all right, then it is not yet the end.”
- “It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in those years.”
- “The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.”
- “When you smile more it increases your face value.”
- “Grieving never gets easier. Just different.”
- “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” — Vivian Greene
- “Faith (hope) is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness.”
- “Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”
- “Hope makes the impossible possible. Faith tells me that no matter what lies ahead of me, God is already there.”
- “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden
- “At the end of ourselves, when we’ve lost what is most dear to us, we have the opportunity to experience the presence of God like we never have before.”
- “A disappointment can sometimes be a Divine appointment in disguise.” — Lysa TerKeurst
- “We rise by lifting others.” — Robert Ingersoll
- “Just remember that when things seem to be falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.” — Ann Graham Lotz
- “Dear God, we hope you have a fun time in our hearts today.” — My granddaughter, Maebry, praying at 4 years old
- “When you can’t change your situation, you can change your perspective!”
- “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” — G. K. Chesterton
- “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths… These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- “Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.” — Joel Osteen
- “Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” — Richard Carlson
- “I don’t have a hope so. I have a know so.”
- “There’s a certainty that comes with a resurrection faith.” — Pastor Gary Pilcher
- “Take what seems meaningless and make something meaningful.”
- “Nothing can help us endure hard times better than our faith.”
- “What is faith if it doesn’t endure when we’re tested the most?”
- “Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit has limited imagination.”
- “Sometimes what we learn and who we become in the process of waiting is even more important than what we’re waiting for.”
- “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” ― C.S. Lewis
- “Sometimes we’re tested. Not to show our weaknesses but to discover our strengths.”
- “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
- “Where you stare, is where you will tend to steer.” — Lysa Turkeurst
- “Your focus will predict your future.” — David Burrier
- “If you focus on problems, you’ll see more & more of them. If you focus on blessings, you’ll also find more & more of them, everywhere, all the time. It’s a choice.”
- “Don’t focus on what you can’t do with what you don’t have.
Focus on what you can do with what you do have!”
- “When you are down to nothing, God is up to something!”
- “Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible & receives the impossible!”
- “Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.”
- “No one is beyond grace.” — Jennifer Slattery
- “Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on a path to the best things that will ever happen to us.”
- “Instead of magnifying your problems today, try magnifying your God.”
- “Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” — George Iles
- “When you know who you are, you don’t have to worry about who you’re not.”
- “You’ll not regret the things you have done as much as you’ll regret the things you haven’t.”
- “That day when we worry about what little we have and then realize that all we have is really all we need. Find peace in that moment.”
- “The day we realize that what little we may believe we have is the same day we realize we have all we need.”
- “Your best teacher is your last mistake.”
- “We’re all terminal.”
- “Don’t drive while looking in the rear view mirror. Likewise, focusing on past mistakes slows down our forward progress.”
- “You are never more like God than when you are walking in love.”
- “We are all broken. That’s how the light gets in.” — Ernest Hemingway
- “Ever wonder why God doesn’t change your situation? Maybe it’s because He’s trying to change your heart.”
- “Faith is not about hoping that everything turns out okay. Faith is about being okay no matter how things turn out.”
- “It takes faith to step out, but sometimes it takes more to stay put.” — Michael Demastus
- “I have discovered that praying the words ‘I can’t’ has led me to discover that I actually can.”
- “The troubles, trials, and difficulties of life reveal our true identities and what, or who, we trust in.”
- “If you change nothing, nothing will change!”
- “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that airplanes and geese take off against the wind, not with it to get more lift.”
- “Worry is an old man with a bent head, carrying a load of feathers he thinks is lead.”
- “Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to manage our fears, not to oust them.”
- “If you assume that every person you meet is hurting or struggling in some way you’ll be right 99% of the time” — Larry Trachte
- “Everybody’s got stuff.” — David Burrier
- “Every day may not be good but there’s something good to be found in every day.” — Alice Morse Earle
- “You can’t change what’s going on around you until you change what’s going on within you.”
- “It takes courage to have faith but it takes even more courage to activate faith.” — Louis Dawson
- “The more you know of him, the more you will learn to trust in him.” — Jessica Zondervan
- “No matter how much you push the envelope, it will still be stationery.”
- “A man with an experience is hardly ever at the mercy of a man with an opinion.”
- “You can’t go forward if you’re always looking backward.”
- “Man says show me and I’ll trust you. God says trust me and I’ll show you.”
- “God wants you just the way you are… but He loves you too much to leave you that way!”
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Be still, sad heart, and cease repining; behind the clouds is the sun still shining.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “Be someone who makes someone else look forward to tomorrow!”
- “It’s not about whether you can or you can’t. It’s about whether you will or you won’t.”
- “Where the grace of God is missed, bitterness is born. But where the grace of God is embraced, forgiveness flourishes… The more we immerse ourselves in grace, the more likely we are to give grace.” — Max Lucado
- “Many times we become stranded in one place, because the pain of knowing what we once had is the pain that stops us from knowing what is ours now.” — Jessica Zondervan
- “When life shuts a door, open it again. It’s a door. That’s how they work.”
- “Easter is not an event. It’s a lifestyle.”
- “Easter is the launching pad.”
- “God is faithful! End of discussion.”
- “It’s in the struggle that we’re made strong.”
- “We’re companions in suffering.”
- “Our world is filled with uncertainty. The only antidote is drawing closer to Him and in His presence you can face uncertainty with perfect peace.”
- “The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of the pain, thanking God during the trials, trusting Him when we’re tempted to lose Hope and loving Him when He seems too distant and far away. At my lowest, God is my hope. At my darkest, God is my light. At my weakest, God is my strength. At my saddest, God is my uplifter.”
- “I’m thankful for my struggles, because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.”
- “Remembering how God was faithful in the past and brought me through a crisis helps me remain hopeful for the future.”
- “Worry is a thinking stream of fear which, if encouraged, becomes a wide channel into which all other thoughts flow.”
- “Where God guides, He provides.”
- “When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” — Mandy Hale
- “Adversity introduces a man to himself.” — Albert Einstein
- “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston S. Churchill
- “How do you spell faith? R-I-S-K.”
- “The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.” — Theodore Roosevelt
- “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” — Theodore Roosevelt
- “Be thankful for the difficulties in your life because it can become doorways to deep dependence on God and increased intimacy. This is where you will find the peace that passes all understanding.”
- “You can be in crisis and not be in crisis. You can be in pain and not be in pain.”
- “The God on the mountaintop is the same God in the valleys.”
- “Your blessing is intended to bring glory to God” — Pastor Gary Pilcher
- “Remember that a miracle lies within every storm.” — David Burrier
- “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” — Fred DeVito
- “A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.”
- “HOPE stands for Hold On, Pain Ends.”
- “The more you are focused on the past and the future, the more you miss the most precious thing there is — the present.” — Eckhart Tolle
- “You are only one decision away from a totally different life.”
- “God will give you a ministry through your pain, if you will let him.”
- “Don’t waste your pain. Often your greatest ministries will come out of your deepest hurts.” — Rick Warren
- “God allows U-turns.”
- “If you need an excuse, any one will do.”
- “Choose to use your mistakes.”
- “It’s the bad days that teach us to appreciate the good days, so learn to appreciate the bad days.”
- “Sometimes a change in climate is easier than a change of heart.”
- “When it comes to change, the hardest step to take is the first one.”
- “The question isn’t ‘can you?’ It’s ‘will you?'”
- “Health is not about the weight you lose but rather about the life you gain.”
- “On this wellness and weight control program, you will gain more than you will lose.”
- “Something in your life may need to change before you can begin the journey to freedom.”
- “Don’t look back; you’re not going that way.”
- “Choose to be a windshield type of person rather than a rear-view mirror type.”
- “A person with an opinion rarely trumps a person with an actual experience.”
- “True humility is staying teachable regardless of how much you think you already know.”
- “Remember that you don’t know what you don’t know.”
- “People who are looking for reasons why it won’t work will find reasons why it won’t work.”
- “Hope for a mountain climb that provides the resistance you need to discover the strength you have within you to overcome!” — Dr. Richard Demming
- “When everything feels like an uphill struggle, try to imagine the view from the top.”
- “Never allow people without a vision to cloud your own.”
- “You can’t rush something you want to last forever, including weight loss.”
- “No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you’re still ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.” — Tony Robbins
- “Try to remember that the struggle you may find yourself in today is developing the strength you may need tomorrow.”
- “Change your thoughts and you’re likely to change your world.”
- “Don’t give up. Sometimes it’s the last key on the ring that opens up the door.”
- “You only fail when you stop trying.”
- “I’m either getting weaker or stronger.”
- “In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.”
- “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
- “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Agatha Christie
- “If you stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything.”
- “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” — Jim Rohn
- “Your perspective determines your path, and you are free to choose your perspective.” — David Bush
- “We are people of faith, not fear.”
- “If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.”
- “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” — John Lubbock
- “Don’t mistake God’s patience for His presence.”
- “Perseverance: doing something despite any delay in achieving success.”
- “If you don’t look where you’re going, you’re going to go where you’re looking.” — Pastor Dean Hofferer
- “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
- “Growth can be painful. Change can be painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you don’t belong.” — Mandy Hale
- “You are stronger than any excuse.”
- “God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.”
- “You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.” — Jennifer L. Freeman
- “Choose not to allow any negative thoughts to control your positive actions.” — David Burrier
- “A setback is a setup for a comeback.”
- “Even if you don’t make a choice, you’ve made a choice.”
- “Commitment: You’re either in or you’re out. There’s no such thing as life in-between.”
- “I am not a product of my circumstances. Rather, I am a product of my decisions – my choices.” — Stephen Covey
- “The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” — Viktor Frankl
- “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’” — Viktor Frankl
- “You don’t know God is all you need until God is all you’ve got.”
- “When we fall into the very mess we hoped to avoid, we often find God’s goodness there which can, and often does, lead to that mess becoming our message.”
- “If I never had a problem I’d never know how He could solve them.”
- “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but rather by the seeds you plant.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson
- “Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.”
- “When I try to be more grateful and less hateful and less spiteful, I’ve learned that I tend to be more thankful.”
- “Love unexpressed is seldom felt. Everything that is built on love will remain.”
- “Your attitude will make or break you. We each have that daily challenge and choice!”
- “Give God your weaknesses and you can be confident that He will give you His strength.”
- “Hope means the most to those who have lived without it!”
- “There are two things in life I’ve discovered that sustain inner peace: surrender and forgiveness.”
- “I have learned that when I was being intensely challenged by life circumstances, I was actually on a path that led to blessings in disguise.”
- “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.” — Jim Carrey
- “Remember that during those times you’re being tested it is not necessarily to expose your weaknesses, but rather perhaps to discover your strengths. Positive self-talk is a discipline we all need to fine-tune for ourselves.”
- “The sky is not the limit. The mind is.”
- “Unfortunately, far too many people quit under pressure right before they would have experienced the miracle.”
I'VE BEEN THERE Ministries 