Jesus is not your accuser. He’s not your prosecutor. He’s not your judge. He’s your friend and your rescuer. Like Zacchaeus, just spend time with Jesus. Don’t hide from him in shame or reject him in self-righteousness. Don’t allow the opinions of other people to shape your concept of him. Get to know him for yourself, and let the goodness of God change you from the inside out.

Indifference was our greatest enemy.

God is not in a hurry to fix us. Our behavior is not his first priority. We are his first priority. Loving us, knowing us, affirming us, protecting us. That is his top goal and his main concern.

If we could get people to think about Jesus, we reasoned, Jesus was more than able to reveal himself to them.

Jesus didn’t care about the scandal. He cared about the scandalous.

I think people would be surprised to discover that their challenges and struggles are not too dissimilar to us, average ordinary people. We're all looking for essentially the same thing and I think that's faith and hope and love and meaning and of course satisfaction, peace, joy.

We need a bigger estimation of God and a smaller estimation of sin.