We're not giving what we're called to give, unless that giving affects how we live - affects what we put on our plate and where we make our home and hang our hat and what kind of threads we've got to have on our back. Surplus Giving is the leftover you can afford to give; Sacrificial Giving is the love gift that changes how you live - because the love of Christ has changed you. God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.

What if I gave thanks in the trouble, for the trouble, because the trouble is a gift that causes me to turn? What if I loved God not for His goods but for His love itself that is goodness enough?

You love as well as you are willing to be inconvenienced.

Any kind of love that lacks the iron of the Cross in it, is anemic love.

You, who were made by Love, made for love-- be still and know and watch love come down.

[Bill Jensen] shared his extensive publishing background with me, and prayerfully offered to work out a proposal and to see if God opened any publishing doors? I never get over the unexpected ways of God.

Maybe the woman who was handed the book [One Thousand Gifts] by a friend the morning before she had an abortion scheduled - and read the book and realized that this pregnancy that she didn't want - perhaps it too could be a gift from God? And then she said showed me the photo of this laughing 5 month old boy.