Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The purpose of Jesus's coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it.
Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross
The gospel shows a God far more holy than the legalist can bear, yet far more merciful than a humanist can conceive
Most apologetic books are really written for Christians, even the ones that purport to be written for non-believers.
If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.
If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice.
The gospel frees us from the relentless pressure of having to prove ourselves, for we are already proven and secure.
In a smaller church your pastoring sets up your preaching. In a larger church your preaching sets up your pastoring.
Not everyone is your brother or sister in the faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.
Prayer-though it is often draining, even an agony-is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible.
A god of less wrath than the God of the Bible is necessarily a god of less love. His anger is a product of his love.
Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.
One of the signs that you may not grasp the unique, radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do.
You won't be able to change the world, yourself, anything, if you don't change yourself inwardly, deeply, enduringly.
Without immersion in God's words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.
God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us as we are.
The reason the stone was rolled away on Jesus's tomb was not so that Jesus could get out, but so that we could get in.
When you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.
When we try and use fear or pride to stop from sinning, we are forgetting that we sin because of either fear or pride.
Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite.
Adam wasn't lonely because he was imperfect but because he was perfect. The ache for friends is not the result of sin.
Jesus' claims are particularly unnerving, because if they are true there is no alternative but to bow the knee to him.
After creation God said, 'It is finished'-and he rested. After redemption Jesus said, 'It is finished'-and we can rest.
One of the biggest obstacles in the way of people coming to Christianity is that they think they know about it already.
If we are not deliberately thinking about our culture and our context, we will be conformed to it without ever knowing.
God looks at the anxious and says, I tore my Son to shreds for you, and you're afraid I will not give you what you need?
There are some needs only you can see. There are some hands only you can hold. There are some people only you can reach.
A life of gratitude to God for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self-righteousness over being good.
Accepted in Christ, we now run the race 'for the joy that is set before us' rather than 'for fear that comes behind us'.
The very fact that we have access to God's attention and presence should concentrate the thoughts and elevate the heart.
Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study.
Jesus smashed two of the rich young ruler's assumptions: Christianity is something you can ADD and something you can DO.
If God exists then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling can matter forever.
Faith is not primarily a function of how you feel. Faith is living out and believing what truth is despite what you feel.
Sin has caused our affections to stray, propelling us to worship relationships, achievement, and work-everything but God.
Christians necessarily believe we depend on God for everything-a prayerless Christian, then, is a contradiction in terms.
To say doctrine doesn't matter, only how you live matters, is itself a doctrine. It's the doctrine of salvation by works.
The Christian faith gives us a new conception of work as the means by which God loves and cares for his world through us.
Jesus's miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.
If we give God things in hope that they'll earn us blessings, we're really not doing anything for him. It's for ourselves.
The Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died.
Prayer should be done regularly, persistently, resolutely, and tenaciously at least daily, whether we feel like it or not.
There is a joy available that the deepest grief cannot put out. No circumstance or person can take away the joy God gives.
It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions is right.
Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing , religious people of his day.
To be a Christian is a standing, a legal position. It means to be a child of God. You are or you are not, there is no try.
When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God's glory.
...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.
No one is so good that they don’t need the grace of the gospel, nor so bad that they can’t receive the grace of the gospel.
Jesus may ask of you far more than you planned to give, but He can give to you infinitely more than you dared ask or think.