We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

What we do flows from who we are.

God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience.

The Bible's power rests upon the fact that it is the reliable, errorless, and infallible Word of God.

People who reject transcendent authority can no longer persuade one another through rational arguments; everything is reduced to personal opinion. Debates about ideas thus degenerate into power struggles; we're left with no moral standard by which to measure the common good. For that matter, how can there be a 'common good' without an objective standard of truth?

The true mark of a Christian leader is trying to build up other people. Raise up other leaders!

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy. "No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.