Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
So live in the light of the resurrection and renewal of this world, and of yourself, in a glorious, never-ending, joyful dance of grace.
If we pick out which parts of the Bible we dislike, we actually have a god we've created. How can that god ever call you out on anything?
The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.
Christians don't believe that goodness gets you to heaven. Christians believe it's exhausting to rely on your own goodness to please God.
The cross is the place where we find the freedom to accept ourselves without being proud and to challenge ourselves without being crushed.
Jesus is not asking us to do anything for him that he hasn’t already done for us, under conditions of difficulty beyond our comprehension.
The irreligious don't repent at all and the religious only repent of sins. But Christians repent of their wrongfully placed righteousness.
We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.
Religion: 'My identity is built on being a good person.' Gospel: 'My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ's.'
We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.
Jesus says, "I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look weak by comparison"
People only get in the afterlife what they have most wanted-either to have God as Savior and Master or to be their own Saviors and Masters.
Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.
Friendship is a deep oneness that develops when two people, speaking the truth in love to one another, journey together to the same horizon.
If we can't "love the sinner; hate the sin" then how can we relate to ourselves? Love who we are in Christ but still hate the sin remaining.
The main human problems often are that we misidentify what will make us happy; and we ask people and things to save us beyond their ability.
The Gospel is this: You're more sinful, evil and weak than you'd ever believe. But you're more valued, accepted and loved than you dared hope.
Elder brothers obey God to get things. They don't obey God to get God himself — in order to resemble him, love him, know him, and delight him.
Occasionally God rips aside the veil, and you begin to see this very fact: All things happen for you. All things. Everything is knit together.
While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.
Grace is humbling and restorative. It pulls you down because Christ had to die for you, but also lifts you up because he wanted to die for you.
The best people often have terrible lives. Job is one example, and Jesus—the ultimate ‘Job,’ the only truly, fully innocent sufferer — is another.
All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.
Nothing we formulate or do can qualify us for access to God. Only grace can do that- based not on our performance but on the saving work of Christ.
If we have not seen our sin and sought radical forgiveness from God, we will be unable to forgive and to seek the good of those who have wronged us.
Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve, and love Jesus will you ever get to know him and grow into his likeness.
Living is giving....If you spend your money on yourself, you are just surviving. But if you want your life to count, if you want to really live - give.
When we grasp that we are unworthy sinners saved by an infinitely costly grace, it destroys both our self-righteousn ess and our need to ridicule others.
When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's.
Cities have more “image of God” per square inch than anywhere else, and so we must not idealize the country as somehow a more spiritual place than the city.
God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.
A triune God would call us to converse with him . . . because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself.
We must go back again and again to the Gospel of Christ crucified, so that our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him.
Those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character.
Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be.
Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.
Look at Jesus Christ. Every time he was in trouble he used the Word of God. When he was tempted he used the Word. When he was suffering on the cross he used the Word.
A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.
The main problem in the Christian life is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel, we have not 'used' the gospel in and on all parts of our life.
Many times people think if God has called you to something, he's promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.
What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.
Contextualization is not giving people what they want. It is giving God's answers (which they probably do not want) to the questions they are asking and in forms they can comprehend.
When people say, "God is love," I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in Christian conception, God really has love as his essence.
If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
Only in Jesus Christ do we see how the untamable, infinite God can become a baby and a loving Savior. On the cross we see how both the love and the holiness of God can be fulfilled at once.
Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.
Religion operates on the principle 'I obey-therefore I am accepted by God.' But the operating principle of the gospel is 'I am accepted by God through what Christ has done-therefore I obey.'
Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, but it does provide deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair
Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.