Who needs a Dr. when you have WebMD? Who needs a counselor when you have the Holy Spirit? And who needs Wal-Mart when you have Amazon.com? :)
When the crucified Jesus is called "the image of the invisible God," the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.
There is something gratuitous about creation, an unnecessary abundance of beauty, and through its blossoms and pleasures we can revel in the sheer largesse of the Father.
...childlike wonder and awe have died. The scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator.
The Christian experience is not primarily formed by our liturgy, doctrine, or ecclesiology, as important as those might be. We are formed by the dangerous stories of our great hero.
Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.
It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.
It is one thing to understand the gospel but is quite another to experience the gospel in such a way that it fundamentally changes us and becomes the source of our identity and security.
My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.
We are changed not by being told what we need to do for God, but by hearing the news about what God has done for us.
To be evil at all, Satan needs good things he can abuse, things like intelligence, power and will. Those good things come from God.
People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.
Leadership doesn't occur in a vacuum, it manifests in a context. These contexts are as dynamic as the personalities, stakes, culture and information available.
I was starting to believe I was a character in a greater story, which is why the elements of story made sense in the first place.
Christian children should be taught at an early age that everything they receive is because of God's grace and love. They will grow up more appreciative and begin to understand that they, too, must have a relationship with Christ. Christian children ...
I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't.
If the apostles reminded even Paul himself to remember the poor (Galatians 2:10), then surely the rest of us need such a reminder.
Respect for the dignity of others includes treating them as rational creatures capable of being persuadad by rational argument, even in the face of frequent evidence to the contrary.
Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.
Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.
Many came to Jesus expecting him to solve their problems. Instead he helped them to connect to their own faith and their own wisdom.
