I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.

The rubber hits the road when we try to show grace to a person most unlike us, even someone morally offensive.

Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God’s name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)

In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.

Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.

We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.