When we realize how great a debt we owe to God, we become willing servants, eager to be poured out for God and His Kingdom.

The gospel points us upward to a God who gave himself for us, backward to the price he paid for our sin, and forward to what he’s making us into.

Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.

Without love even the most radical devotion to God is of no value to Him. Let me make sure that sinks in… You can gain all the spiritual gifts in the world. You can take the most radical steps of obedience. You can share every meal with the homeless in your city. You can memorize the book of Leviticus. You can pray each morning for four hours like Martin Luther. But if what you do does not flow out of a heart of love - a heart that does those things because it genuinely desires to do them - it is ultimately worthless to God.

True religion is when you serve God to get nothing else but more of God. Many people use religion as a way of getting something else from God they want-blessings, rewards, even escape from judgement. This is wearisome to us, and to God. But when God is His own reward, Christianity becomes thrilling. Sacrifice becomes joy.

God sometimes answers our prayers by giving us what we would have asked for had we known what He knows.

Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.