We’ve got to get past this idea that God is most glorified when we’re rich, healthy and wealthy and we go, “Isn’t God grand? Look at all He gave me.” Because if anybody joins us in that and says, “Oh, if you love Jesus, you get a house and health and cars? Then I love Jesus too.” Because then all of a sudden you’ve got a different religion. You have the religion of cars and houses, not God.

Stop going to church everywhere and start belonging to church somewhere.

Engaging the city around us and ministering to its needs reveal to us the remaining bastions of sin in our lives, the areas we refuse to surrender to God.

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.

When we see the bankruptcy, slavery, and vanity of everything else, we can finally say, ‘To die is gain.’

The Christian views trials as a pathway to maturity.

Your approval before God is woven into the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, not what other men and women think about you.