We do not choose suffering simply because we are told to, but because the one who tells us to describes it as the path to everlasting joy.

We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war.

If gratitude is not rooted in the beauty of God before the gift, it is probably disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to delight in him for who he is so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!

There is no other way the world is going to see the supreme glory of Christ today, except that we break free from the Disneyland of America and begin to live lifestyles of missionary sacrifice that looks to the world like our treasure is in heaven and not on the earth.

If grace is to be free - which is the very meaning of grace - we cannot view it as something to be repaid.

Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.

There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow - especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.