A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.

To God on whom we rely knows what suffering is all about- not merely in the way that God knows everything, but by experience.

The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.

It's not as if the New Testament writers came along and said, "The culmination of Old Testament books is more books, New Testament books." In some ways they thought instead of the culmination of Old Testament books being Christ himself, the word incarnate as the opening verses of Hebrews 1 put it. In the past God spoke to the fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son and the son is revelation.

Imagination is a God-given gift; but if it is fed dirt by the eye, it will be dirty. All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination. Therefore what feeds the imagination is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness.

Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel, conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns

We treat the Bible, not as if it's a magic book that has to be handled like a piece of abracadabra, make sure it's dusted, never put it on the floor, and things like that.