I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.
The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.
One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.
The question isn't if someone will sign up for spiritual formation; it's just who and what our spirits will be formed by.
When people feel they're getting to speak into what's being preached, there is high built-in motivation to participate.
We complicate our faith and lives in many ways, but at the core, our purpose is simple: We are called to love.
Evangelical churches are weaker than we realize because we don't teach the confessions and doctrine.
The fun of the Super Bowl is the week leading into it; once it's actually played, the story dies down very, very quickly.
There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.
Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.
By keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.
Satan's survival-of-the-fittest system appears to work- in the short run. But the great controversy is about the long run.
I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves 'Downton Abbey' will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel.
To this day, 'The Duke and I' remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward.
Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?
I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him.
It was heaven. Forget angels, forget St. Peter and glittering harpsichords. Heaven was a dance in the arms of one's true love.
Vegas represents the idea of America I had as a kid. The big cars, the pretty girls; everything is possible in Vegas.
Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.
Heartbreak comes in different sizes, and the departure of an 18-year-old child for a far college has to be treated as a very benign form of the disease.
