Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers.
My purpose as a writer is to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts.
Worry is momentary atheism crying out for correction by trust in a good, sovereign God. Suffering breaks self-reliance.
But isn't it wrong to be motivated by reward? No, it isn't. If it were wrong, Christ wouldn't offer it to us a motivation.
Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions-and in your church and the poor-and your heart will follow.
Give more as you make more. Remember: God prospers us not to raise our standard of living, but to raise our standard of giving.
There's a throne in each life big enough for only one. Christ may be on that throne, or money may be. But both cannot occupy it.
Cheap grace replaces truth with tolerance, lowering the bar so everyone can jump over it and we can all feel good about ourselves.
God loves a great story, and all of us who know Him will recall and celebrate and continue to live in that story for all eternity.
In the midst of prosperity, the challenge for believers is to handle wealth in such a way that it acts as a blessing, not a curse.
Even if abortion were made easy or painless for everyone, it wouldn't change the bottom-line problem that abortion kills children.
For Christians this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven.
The repentant man rightfully loses trust in himself. He recognizes his self-dependence as the source of his problems, not the solution.
Give cheerfully. If we're not cheerful, the problem is our heart, and the solution is redirecting our heart, not withholding our giving.
Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity. . . . We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.
Because satan hates us, he's determined to rob us of the joy we'd have if we believed what God tells us about the magnificent world to come.
Grace never ignores the awful truth of our depravity; in fact it emphasizes it. The worse we realize we are the greater we realize God's grace.
Give regularly. Stewardship is not a once-a-year consideration, but a week-to-week, month-to-month commitment requiring discipline and consistency.
Give generously. How much is generous? There's no one-size-fits-all answer. If you've never tithed, start there - then begin to stretch your generosity.
Give worshipfully. Our giving is a reflexive response to God's grace. It doesn't come out of our altruism - it comes out of the transforming work of Christ in us.
Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.
The more you give, the more comes back to you, because God is the greatest giver in the universe, and He won't let you outgive Him. Go ahead and try. See what happens.
Hell is not evil; it's a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.
For the Christian, death is not the end of adventure but a doorway from a wold where dreams and adventures shrink, to a world where dreams and adventures forever expand.
Give. Giving affirms Christ's lordship. It dethrones me and exalts Him. It breaks the chains of mammon that would enslave me and transfers my center of gravity to Heaven.
A disciple does not ask, "How much can I keep?" but, "How much more can I give?" Whenever we start to get comfortable with our level of giving, it's time to raise it again.
The cost of redemption cannot be overstated. The wonders of grace cannot be overemphasized. Christ took the hell He didn't deserve so we could have the heaven we don't deserve.
Countless mistakes in marriage, parenting, ministry, and other relationships are failures to balance grace and truth. Sometimes we neglect both. Often we choose one over the other.
This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don't suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him.
Are we truly obeying the command to love our neighbor as ourselves if we're storing up money for potential future needs when our neighbor is laboring today under actual present needs?
Give sacrificially. We don't like risky faith. We like to have our safety net below us. But we miss the adventure of seeing God provide when we've really stretched ourselves in giving.
Jesus' miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.
Jesus didn't tell us not to store up treasures. On the contrary, he commanded us to. He simply said, "Stop storing them up in the wrong place, and start storing them up in the right place."
When our eyes are set on eternity, the news that someone has come to know the Savior means a great deal more than the news of a salary raise or the prospect of getting the latest high-tech gadget.
Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11).
Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.
In Heaven, to look into God's eyes will be to see what we've always longed to see: the person who made us for His own good pleasure. Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the first time.
When you leave this world, will you be known as one who accumulated treasures on earth that you couldn't keep? Or will you be recognized as one who invested treasures in heaven that you couldn't lose?
Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable sinning is not biblical grace. God's grace never encourages us to live in sin, on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth.
What we love about this life are the things that resonate with the life we were made for. The things we love are not merely the best this life has to offer—they are previews of the greater life to come.
Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven.
It's not just what Christian fiction lacks I appreciate - it's what it offers. The variety is vast: contemporary, historical, suspense, mysteries, adventure, young adult, romance, fantasy, science fiction.
Whenever I see an unmarried woman carrying a child, my first response is one of respect. I know she could have taken the quick fix without anyone knowing, but she chose instead to let an innocent child live.
I imagine our first glimpse of Heaven will cause us to gasp in amazement and delight. That first gasp will likely be followed by many more as we continually encounter new sights in that endlessly wonderful place.
As you go through life, don’t let your feelings-real as they are-invalidate your need to let the truth of God’s words guide your thinking. Remember that the path to your heart travels through your mind. Truth matters.
If you're considering going into student debt, I encourage you to seek the Lord's will through the reading and study of His Word, prayer, and the wise counsel of others before you make the decision to take out a loan.
What is good about Good Friday? Why isn't it called Bad Friday? Because out of the appallingly bad came what was inexpressibly good. And the good trumps the bad, because though the bad was temporary, the good is eternal.
Tithing isn't the ceiling of giving; it's the floor. It's not the finish line of giving; it's just the starting blocks. Tithes can be the training wheels to launch us into the mind-set, skills, and habits of grace giving.
The tithe is God's historical method to get us on the path of giving. In that sense, it can serve as a gateway to the joy of grace giving. It's unhealthy to view tithing as a place to stop, but it can still be a good place to start.
Put your resources, your assets, your money and possessions, your time and talents and energies into the things of God. As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure. Money leads; hearts follow.