Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ’s love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the...

If you try to add to God’s salvation you subtract. If you try to add to God’s salvation you subtract. If you try to merit God’s salvation you haven’t believed at all, even if you...

Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don’t really want it at all, though perhaps they can’t admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very...

At Gethsemane: “Jesus is subordinating His loudest desires to His deepest desires.

The only way your child will grow out of their dependency into self-sufficient adults is for you to essentially abandon your own independence for 20 years or so.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot...

Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and...

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep...

Think of people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian, it’s because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but...

…We must say to ourselves something like this: ‘Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn’t think “I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.” No, he was...

The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and...

All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.

The answer is that their confidence was actuallh in God, not in their limited understanding of what they thought he would do. They had inner assurance that God would rescue them. However, they were not...

Men, you’ll never be a good groom to your wife unless you’re first a good bride to Jesus.

This principle – that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend – is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage...

unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.

No one has ever been deeply changed by an act of the will. The only thing that can re-forge and change a life at its root, is love.

If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.

In Ephesians 5, Paul shows us that even on earth Jesus did not use his power to oppress us but sacrificed everything to bring us into union with him. And this takes us beyond the...

Within this Christian vision for marriage, here’s what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, “I...

As I took up life as a minister, I tried to understand why so many people resisted and rejected God, I soon realized that perhaps that main reason was affliction and suffering. …But at the...

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce...

There is a third quality to friendship, and it is not as easy to put into a single word. The right word, literally, is “sympathy” – sym-pathos, common passion. This means that friendships are discovered...

…Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don’t develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will...

The material creation was made by God to be developed, cultivated, and cared for in an endless number of ways through human labor. But even the simplest of these ways is important. Without them all,...

Tolerance isn’t about not having beliefs. It’s about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.

Certainly we should be very active in seeking God, and Jesus himself called us to ‘ask, seek, knock’ in order to find him. Yet those who enter a relationship with God inevitably look back and...

…the basic premise of religion—that if you live a good life, things will go well for you—is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with...

When you feel great delight in someone, meeting their needs and getting their gratitude and affection in return is extremely rewarding to your ego. At those times you may be acting more out of the...

The gospel, if it is really believed, removes neediness – the need to be constantly respected, appreciated, and well regarded; the need to have everything in your life go well; the need to have power...

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments.

Jesus Christ says, ‘Kill me and in 3 days, not only this temple, but all temples in the whole world will be out of business.’ This is the most stunning thing any human being has...

Properly understood, the doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means as messed up their false worldview should make them.

The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than alien intrusion of sin, as the villain.

It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.

We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a...

What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse’s holiness.

In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a...

Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is “there” that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or...

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you...

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which...

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart...

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: “If I was saved by my good works — then there would be a limit to what God could...

If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them,...

What you need to drive out an old passion, is a new passion, a greater passion. What you need is an over-mastering positive passion. […] Just as Rachel was Jacob’s over-mastering passion, the passion of...