Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.

The most powerful thing that can happen in the place of prayer is that you yourself become the prayer. You leave the prayer room able as Jesus' hands and feet on earth. This is what it means to pray continually (without ceasing), to see with the eyes of Jesus and to hear with His ears with every waking moment.

Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that's really worth following in this world or the one that's coming.

Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone... Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.

As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.

I am wonderfully content with a God who does not deal with me as my sins deserve.

A ragamuffin knows he's only a beggar at the door of God's mercy.