The greatest act of freeing happened when Jesus died in our place and paid our debt.

The murders of Newtown are a warning to me - and you. Not a warning to see our schools as defenseless, but to see our souls as depraved. To see our need for a Savior. To humble ourselves in repentance for the God-diminishing bitterness of our hearts. To turn to Christ in desperate need, and to treasure his forgiveness, his transforming, and his friendship.

God created us with sexual passion so that there would be language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.

Christ is glorified in you when he is more precious to you than all that life can give or death can take.

At one level, the message of the book of Ruth is that the life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there.

Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.

The call of God does what the call of man cannot. It raises the dead.