Make them imagine repentance more like an appearance in court before a cranky old judge, less like a child knocking on his father’s study door to have a chat.

I don’t even like the phrase ‘opportunity to sin’ because it implies the opportunity to obey.

Which would give her an ulcer first? All the aspirin and prescription pain medication she took, or Jack Carlton? Then again, that left only one cause, since he was the reason she needed the drugs...

Islamic jihadists making sacrifices tended to create gruesome headlines.–Titus Ray, Chapter 29

It’s neither and it’s both. That’s the perfect kind of art. Labels only detract from the artist’s intention.

Though I despise it, I do not doubt His Love for the creatures. I have seen it —His ever-reaching outward for any hand that might reach back. At His love, I tremble yet believe.

In every human act of charity, something larger, greater, divine has come down to visit the act.

Why not have a God in your back pocket for when you need Him? That’s all most of them mean by ‘Christian.

You don’t change the world by telling it what to do, sitting at home, and telling it what you believe. You believe by throwing yourself into it. Making a leap, getting involved, then waiting, taking...

We’ve peered into the deepest parts to see beyond what lies on the surface.

Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.

That night, as the stars sparkled in the sky, Polly dreamed…

If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain.

I have witnessed the pleasant result of producing a human who faithfully claims to be a Christian, but who on some fundamental level does not think Christianity actually works. And just one Christian of this...

choice” and some souls can be captured simply by dangling before the creature a continual, lifelong supply of things from which to choose.

A very smart woman once asked me, ‘Do you think money is the answer to everything?’ I have a family issue and I’m going home

faith” as an excuse for their failure? They could pretend that their Christian convictions were all that was standing between them and success, and they could declare that they would be on top of the...

But he couldn’t risk taking the helmet off. It was the only thing saving him from the firing squad. He was no longer able to keep his thoughts silent. No longer able to squash his...

When some one mortal yet eternal human merely being relying on precisely nothing but the audacious love of his Maker, calls on Him to part the Heavens, well, we are undone.

They forget that for a Creator to create, He must be greater than His creation, thus He must be by definition not less than emotional.

They view repentance as the thing they have to do in order to earn forgiveness, therefore the more difficult they make it, the more credit they tally up.

No earthly act escapes its eternal echoes, echoes more substantial than the acts themselves.

Jack watched Tara glide around the dance floor with the best man, a knot of jealousy threatening to strangle him. Just the phrase ‘best man’ raised his ire. Who had come up with that turn...

Enjoy today because it won’t come back.

This is the worst thing about poisons and deadly sins – that we enjoy them.

When young, the humans are all Imagination because Memory is so much smaller a part of their experience, so little of them is grounded in it. As they grow older, however, Memory overtakes their Imagination,...

As a motivation —for humans, but Christians especially— guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

Remember, philosophically speaking, Americans are mongrels —practical materialists but with a dreamy streak of divine approval.

Everyone needs to calm down! Okay, you got a weird cookie. So what? I don’t mean to swat your ego here, buddy, but this smacks a little narcissistic for me. God is not trying to...

You can’t let your light die out. Yours is the only light on my dark path. Without it, I will be forever lost.

To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.

Why do you doubt your senses and your soul?’‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects either of them. A slight disorder of the stomach or the mind makes them cheats. You could be an undigested...

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer.

Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you’ll ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to...

pursuit”. To follow, to chase, to inquire, to hunt, to seek. To track in order to overtake and capture. This they don’t do. Instead, having been offered a promise of happiness, they progress to a...

Nothing can happen to me that hasn’t gone through His hand first. If He wants to deliver me, He will. If He doesn’t, He has a good reason for it.

Oh, a whole bunch. Stuff with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp. Big movies.

You’re being stupid again. Trusting in what they say.” Disdain dripped from his words like pus from an infected wound.

Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional —the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations.

keepin’ it real” for the world as much as it is keepin’ it holy for the Kingdom. My ultimate goal is, yes, to please the readers, but I must first please God. P.S. Maybe Peter...

Remember, this type doesn’t really believe He’ll forgive them, by repenting they are trying to earn what they do not think, in any case, He will pay.

Indeed if they ever once saw the endless supply of eternal opportunities The Adversary offers them every temporal moment of day after day of their fuddled little lives, they would stagger at the sheer industry...

Do you suppose kissing is like riding a bicycle?

Do You Believe?

When the devil comes knocking on your door simply say “Jesus, it’s for you.

It fits my experience of Him.

Also, always encourage ‘being good’ over ‘doing good.’ Acts of goodness are the difficulty for us and should, of course, be avoided. ‘Being good’ is far less problematic, largely because it lacks definition and can...

Most of them don’t mind too much the idea of a God existing somewhere, just so long as He’s indulgent.

God didn’t give Moses ten fortune cookies in a to-go box. God didn’t lead the Israelites through the wilderness with a neon all-you-can-eat sign. And God doesn’t speak to people in bathrooms, public or otherwise.

If the only tool in Willem’s arsenal was a silent supplication to an absent almighty, then I might as well be sitting next to a raving radical ready to die for the promise of seventy-two...