Love says: I've seen the ugly parts of you, and I'm staying. Our culture doesn't love love; It loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without the sacrifice.

The general confusion is that our moral behavior is what justifies us before God. Most of us would never say that with our mouths but we feel that lie in our heart and believe it in our minds. You can be morally upright and not be a worshipper of Christ at all.

Because a God who is ultimately most focused on his own glory will be about the business of restoring us, who are all broken images of him. His glory demands it. So we should be thankful for a self-sufficient God whose self-regard is glorious.

The Imperfect Pastor by Zack Eswine might be the most helpful and profound book I've read in years. If you're in pastoral ministry grab a copy.

More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin’s Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.

If you are in Christ, you are fully and completely forgiven for all your sin-past, present and future.

We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much longer.