Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult...

The God of the universe–the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor–loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try...

Part of the genius of (Nick) Sabin’s system was that he understood that no matter the skill set, he was inheriting vulnerable kids from various backgrounds. For those times when they made poor decisions, as...

The moral crisis she’d just gone through made her feel indulgent toward the faults, the delinquencies of others. How thoroughly a human being can be buffeted and over-mastered by fate had been borne in upon...

When religion becomes so involved in a future good “over yonder” that it forgets the present evils over here it is as dry as dust religion and needs to be condemned.

Just open your eyes! I thought. These desperate poor are your gurus.

God’s word tells us that righteousness is a gift; it cannot be earned. But godliness is not a gift. We must pay a price to touch godliness through a daily decision to die to self...

Everybody wants a miracle; we just don’t want to be in a situation where we need one. You can’t have one without the other. Sometimes what we perceive as our problem is really God setting...

Throughout history the cross stands as a symbol of protest and revolt; protest against all claims, whether by religious or political power, to absolute unquestioning control over human minds and bodies; revolt against all systems...

If we know our original blessing, we can easily handle our original sin. If we rest in a previous dignity, we can bear insults effortlessly. If you really know your name is on some eternal...

Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about...

Humankind cannot bear too much reality.

As your father keeps clean his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit.

The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances...

The soul is “torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

The struggle against the weakness in yourself is never a solitary struggle. No person can achieve self-mastery or his or her own.

When God interrupts your life, He is calling you to follow Him in a new way. By breaking into your settled pattern, He is moving you to a new place where you can make fresh...

The choice we face is not, as many imagine, between heaven and hell. Rather, the choice is between heaven and this world. Even a fool would exchange hell for heaven; but only the wise will...

Paul was terribly personal. The books I like are the ones that make you feel like you are with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal,...

If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.

If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church’s culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of...

It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus; to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult.

[Mary] says her memories Will help those of usNewly come to our Lord’s mercy,To live in His light.

Love, its power and authority, always gets there first, comes to believe first, and always waits for the others, especially the leaders, to catch up! This is the reality of what happened among the disciples...

Yanked out of the present, Adam discovered the richness of the past in people’s stories.

Treat this crisis as practice for the next crisis.

Being that ‘reason is not antithetical to faith’ (Woods) and that Pentecost established the Reality of super-nature (Lewis) and that ‘theology matters’ (Wimber), then ’empowered evangelicalism’ (Nathan) is the natural expression of discipleship.”~R. Alan Woods...

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God’s grace and is...

Bono has commented often that U2 did everything the wrong way around. Other bands started singing about girls and then found the issues in the cosmos and started singing about God; U2 started singing about...

Older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as a finished product when in fact they are in process.

Maybe you have been looking for peace for no one but yourself.

There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for His people to make a showpiece of Him and not to use Him.

Today we must begin again. Step by small step, without any more protection than comes from our own bodies.

The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and...

It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.

You don’t realize your story is changing you until you look back.

There is an inverse relationship between control and trust. Trust is more of a two-way exchange than most people, especially those in power, realize. Leaders in government, news media, universities, and corporations think they can...

Any counseling that does not pursue spiritual formation through an intimate relationship with Jesus by faith as one of its chief goals is not worthy to be called BIBLICAL counseling.

Edwards’s God was glorious, full of beauty, and seemingly uninterested in making people feel insecure. Edwards was a mystic, a man who didn’t simply write or preach about God, he experienced him.

Once you put yourself on the lookout for teachable moments, you’ll find them everywhere!

Any serious reading of the Bible means personal involvement in it, not symbol mental agreement with abstract propositions. And involvement is dangerous, because it leaves one open to unforeseen conclusions.

People who have been initiated “broke through in what felt like breaking down”.

I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject.

Any believer who has not encountered the Cross is not yet a follower of Christ

The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him....

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...

A character began to speculate whether the incessant drive to have things over again might be the root of all evil.

When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation.Jesus said you are to...

They finally achieve a sort of outward-facing union.