I've found great virtue in two-thirds of the way into the message; right before I'm really want to nail home a point, pausing to tell a joke or to tell a light-hearted story, because I know my audience has been working with me now for 20 or 25 minutes. And if I can get them to laugh, get oxygen into their system, it wakes up those who might be sleeping, so there's something about using a story to draw people back in right before you drive home your final point. In that case I think it's real legitimate just to use a story for story's sake.

Gratitude is a dialysis of sorts... it flushes the self-pity out of our systems.

We might question God's actions, decisions, or declarations. But we can never, ever question his zany, stunning, unquenchable affection.

We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly.

Does the presence of pain mean the absence of God? I try to help people see that God uses pain, that pain is one of the ways God shapes us into the kind of beings He wants us to be for eternity.

Give a man religion without reminding him of his filth, and the result will be arrogance in a three- piece suit.

One person told me that Christians believe in a king. We believe in a King Jesus who oversees the affairs of mankind. Maybe we're reaching for an earthly king.