God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.
As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.
Blind people don't decide to see. Jesus says, 'See!' and they see.
I just want to preach so bad I can hardly stand it. I love what I do.
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
I am not a good example of an urban pastor. Because of the way I believe God calls me to use my time, I don't have significant relationships with most of my neighbors.
Life is in God's hand.
The absence of God in most spheres of life is perceived to be normal, and even Christians feel it as normal - which is why absorbing the culture all around us and its priorities is so dangerous.
I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activity. God is passionate about hallowing the name of God.
Neither Muslims nor anyone else truly worships the true God if they reject Jesus as he really is in the Gospels.
It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry.
God revealed himself through the Law, which pointed to Christ as its end and goal, commanded the obedience that comes from faith, increased transgressions, and shut the mouths of all humans because no one has performed the righteousness of the Law so as not to need a substitute.
The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.
As much as we can, let's defend the truth by pointing to what the apostles taught, and let's call out sin by pointing to the inconsistencies between what we say we believe and what we do.
Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve.
I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.
Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.
God tests His people through hardship.
The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.
Human beings were put on the planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator at every point in every sphere of culture.
It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It's amazing how many people go into the ministry who don't really like to be with people.
Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!
I want to learn from everybody.
I owe my life and hope to the gospel.
My prayer is that the good news of Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, would flood Jewish communities around the world, that the veil would be lifted, and that we would see a massive turning of Israel to the Lord Jesus.
God created a good world that was subjected to futility because of the sinful, treasonous choice of the first human beings.
God has levels of willing and delighting. He wills and delights in things in different ways so that approval and disapproval can coexist without being contradictory, without canceling each other out. I am making the case here for infinite complexity.
God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.
I know God's voice. I've seen God's hand. If the Lord is my helper, why should I be afraid?
One way to appreciate C.S. Lewis is to see how his Christian humility shaped his life and work.
I owe my life and hope to the gospel. Without it I would still be strutting with racist pride, or I would be suffering the moral paralysis of 'white guilt.' But the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.
You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.
Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.
The giving of the Quran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity. If this is so, then Quran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.
The Gospel is not a theory; the Gospel is not a philosophy or an idea; the Gospel is not a way of thinking or feeling. The Gospel is an event in history.
Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.
I can be poor, I can lose a job, I can have a hospital bill that I don't know how to pay, for I can do all these things through Him who strengthens me.
Whether sexual orientation can change or not, hearts can change and turn any sexual orientation into an occasion for the glory of Christ. Those with same-sex attraction glorify Christ through sexual abstinence and through the enrichment of significant Christ-exalting relationships in other ways.
You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.
Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.
The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.
If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
I believe God has a future for ethnic Israel.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
When I believe in Jesus, I am united to Christ. Therefore, what he did and achieved becomes mine by this union through faith alone. His righteous life is imputed to me. What Christ achieved is counted as mine.
My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.
The saving love of God is his doing whatever must be done, at great cost to himself, and for the least deserving, so that he might enthrall them with what will make them supremely happy forever, namely, himself.
Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.
