Unmet expectations are tough when it's your wife or your husband, but it's really tough when it's God. And yet, it can be a time of growth and a time of faith, a time of understanding who God is.

God crowns us. Most people crown their Christmas trees with either an angel or a star. God uses both.

Choose satisfaction over salary. Better to be happy with little than miserable with much.

Which would you prefer? To be king of the mountain for a day? Or to be a child of God for eternity?

When you teach on a familiar text, you're capitalizing on common knowledge. When you teach on an unfamiliar text, you're having to build a bridge of understanding, and we need to do that as well.

A story does that: it will reach out and hook somebody and hold them for just a few moments while you unpack this story in their presence.

God wants us to know we are saved, for saved people are dangerous people, willing to face off with the world, unafraid of the consequences since they know that, whatever happens, they will have eternal life.