A colleague like Barnabas could comfort him (Paul) in illness and keep him from overstrain when fit.

I was made to feel I could do things. If you get this feeling early and can hold it until you’re 15, you tend to never lose it.

Someone once said that Stephen Austin didn’t like preachers at all. He swore that “one preacher could stir up more trouble than a dozen horse thieves.” Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that it is the role...

You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.

You can’t grasp the wonderful and keep your feet on the ground.

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

They (Reagan and Kennedy) had some combination of cheerfulness and vulnerability that made them seem like boys on adventure who had become lost in needed a small kindness to get them back on the right...

If we spend our days trying to avoid the landmines of stepping out of God’s will, then will be afraid to take any risks for his kingdom. But when you know there is a net...

There is only One on record who has practiced Christianity in every respect at every moment of his life – Christ himself. In that sense, there are no practicing Christians, but only Christians who, in...

Of his first enemy encounter, Gen. Grant said that after his initial fear, “My heart resumed its place.” Grant said he suddenly realized his potential enemy he had been “as much afraid of me as...

Their lifelong love of learning, their remarkable wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, was fostered primarily by their father. He read aloud to them at night, eliciting their responses to works of history and literature. He organized amateur...

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is...

the decision to stand unapologetically for the gospel has been tantamount to a new conversion. It brings peace; it dissolves fears; it snaps fingers at ridicule.

Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped...

You get a feeling when you look back on life that all God really wants from us is to live inside a body He made, and enjoy the story, and to bond with Him through...

To love with expectations is, in the end, an oppressive, driven thing, and people know it when they receive it.

The line between spontaneity and stupidity can be very thin.

When in situations of stress, we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capabilities perfectly, placed us here to succeed. No...

It takes courage to seek God, and courage to wait for His reply.

(Pastor Chuck) Smith told his elders in no uncertain terms that if the church had to turn away young people because of bare feet and clothes that they would be better off ripping up the...

Why do lazy, minimum effort employees always seem to find places where they feel “underappreciated”?

God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery, transformation, God and Grace will eventually ask of us, we would either...

Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

We are not trying to manipulate God and tell Him what to do. Rather, we are asking Him to tell us what to do.

We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and...

It is very bad to reach the stage of thinking deeply and frequently about duty unless you are prepared to go a stage further. The Law, as St. Paul first clearly explained, only takes you...

Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back...

[T]he road to character is built by confronting your own weakness.

The thing you do with a boy it is to show him all the to show. Don’t hold nothing back.

I thought parenting was going to reveal my strengths, never realizing that God had ordained it to reveal my weaknesses.

does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are...

Jesus did not command us to “develop” leaders. He commanded us to make “disciples”. The world “develops” leaders, the Church “disciples” them. The two are not the same.

A continual diet of the Word satisfies, and it builds an appetite for more.

You think you’re a role model, and they (protégés)turn around and tell you you’re a negative role model.

Who are we aligning ourselves with? Are we aligning ourselves with the presence of God as it is abused, broken, bleeding, and mocked and scorned even now in this world? Do we take that one...

We have been shown how to fight hate without becoming hate ourselves. We have been given a Companion and a Friend and not just a good idea. We have been given joy in the midst...

He (Peter) doesn’t know if he’s looking into the eyes of a madman, or the eyes of a King.

It’s exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying.

God will not give me humility, or patience, or holiness, or love as separate investments of His grace. He has given only one gift to meet our need, His Son Christ Jesus.

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.

Imagine what it must be like for teenagers who don’t feel they have room to breathe in their own homes. If you are a parent reading this book, you care about your child. If she...

All of life comes in seed form – not as monuments.

The world commands our desire for purity but bids that we not be too precise about it.

authoritative personalities” springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.

We’ve taken the lifeblood out of Christianity and put Kool-Aid in its place so that it tastes better to the crowds, and the consequences are catastrophic. ~Follow Me, pg. 7

Failure means nothing now, only that it taught me life.

Survivor” is not a label you choose for yourself.

We would do our theology better if more was at stake in what we said.

If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and...

The heart of a Christian, who believes and feels, cannot pass the hardships and deprivations of the poor without helping them.