Our fears lie to us about how important they are.

You have to push on both pedals to make the wheels go 'round. Similarly, you need faith in Christ as well as knowledge. The problem is that there are always Christians who want to push one pedal - either knowledge or experience. We need both.

As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.

All evangelists want to do is share a message about the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. But our world is confused by the confidence we have in the gospel, and is threatened by it. Satan, I am sure, causes those things to echo in the world to increase this sort of common confusion.

We do live best in this world when we keep the next in mind.

Too often preachers want to deal with people simply at the level of publicly accessible reason. We participate with them in their own epistemology. But this is not New Testament preaching. We have a message that is not from this world; it is from God. We don't know it by our own cleverness; we know it because God has revealed it.

God can use even stray, honest comments to bring people to himself.