There are two kinds of doubt: one that fully lives into the questions, and one that uses the questions as weapons against fully living.

When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.

We were made to live in a posture of grateful worship, and when we live in praise we live our purpose, and all the pieces fall in place, us all falling down in thanks.

Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies... waters that have no life.

The message of Christmas is not that we can make peace. Or that we can make love, make light, make gifts, or make this world save itself. The message of Christmas is that this world’s a mess and we can never save ourselves from ourselves and we need a Messiah.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?

We all get to choose where we set up the stage of our lives - before the Crowds, the Court, the Congregation, the Critics (inner or otherwise)-- or the Cross of Christ. All except One will assess your performance. Only One will accept you before your performance ... Only in Jesus is there 100% acceptance before even 1% performance.