The Good News does not hinge on words like do or change but on the powerless, irrelevant, and frightening words like belief and faith.

To paraphrase Paul, God often uses the cheesy to confound the sophisticated. He regularly honors those who are confused about his leading as if they have nailed it.

As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, the 'weightlessness' of contemporary belief in God is a reality...for religious liberals and many evangelicals.

I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.

I've come to believe that God, in His wisdom, allows martyrdom in every generation in part because, without them, the reality of Christ's death for us becomes increasingly blurry... As we look at [the martyrs], the mist that sometimes enshrouds first-century Golgotha is burned away, and we see...the Lord nailed to the cross.

The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience.

The cost of discipleship is to live the life God has given us, serving in mundane ways the people he's put in our path.