Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. He is the Seeker; we are the ones who are running.

A faithful person is revealed by those who hate him or her. Are you hated for your faith or ethics? If nobody hates you, maybe you have not displayed Christ openly enough.

The Bible alone is the only authority that can bind the conscience of a person absolutely because it is the only authority that carries with it the intrinsic authority of God Himself.

Sometimes we behave and perform with our lives, not for God, but for an audience.

The Advent season is that time when we seek to, in a manner of speaking, mute our memory of what has already happened, that we might brighten our joy that it happened. We leave the already of His advent to taste the bitter of the not yet. We, in short, go back, that we might look forward to His coming.

We take comfort, however, that mystery is not a synonym for contradiction.