God does have a specific plan for our lives, but it is not one that He expects us to figure out before we make a decision.

Scripture is profitable for training in righteousness. No one succeeds at the highest level in sports without working out. No one makes it in music without lots of practice. No one excels in scholarship without years of study. And no one makes it far in the school of holiness without hours and days and years in the word. You and I simply will not mature as quickly, minister as effectively, or live as gloriously without immersing ourselves in the Scriptures. We need the Bible if we are to be competent Christians.

God tends to do his best work when the odds appear stacked against him.

Much of the impotence of American churches is tied to a profound ignorance and apathy about justification. Our people live in a fog of guilt. Or just as bad, they think being a better person is all God requires.

The next time someone tells you, "The Church is full of a bunch of hypocrites." You can respond, "You don't even know the half of it."

Plain horse sense ought to tell us that anything that makes no change in the man who professes it makes no difference to God either, and it is an easily observable fact that for countless numbers of persons the change from no-faith to faith makes no actual difference in the life.

Many in Jesus' day saw him, but they didn't have communion with him. You can have more of Christ by faith than they had by sight.