What makes a Christian a Christian is not perfection but forgiveness.

Gratitude develops faith. The surest path out of a slump is marked by the road sign "thank you, God."

When all of earth turns against you, all of heaven turns toward you.

Faith is the conviction that God knows more than we do about this life and He will get us through it.

There is a rawness and a wonder to life. Pursue it. Hunt for it. Sell out to get it. Don't listen to the whines of those who have settled for a second-rate life and want you to do the same so they won't feel guilty. Your goal is not to live long; it's to live.

I don't have a lot of time in the sermon anyway. The sermon is only 25 minutes, which to me is frighteningly short. So I feel as if I need to get into that pretty quickly and make it as practical and accessible as possible.

The purpose of the Bible is simply to proclaim God's plan to save His children.