We all long for someone to tell us who we are. The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God's name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.

Christianity isn't meant to simply be believed; it's meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people.

Evangelicalism is like my religious mother tongue. I revert to it whenever I’m angry or excited or surrounded by other people who understand what I’m saying. And it’s the language in which I most often hear God’s voice on the rare occasion that it rises above the noise.

I don't know why Christians keep fighting over which is better-singleness or marriage-when it seems rather obvious, both from Scripture and from Church history, that both can glorify God.

You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.

From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son's incarceration as 'a short break before college?' A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off? Santa.That's right. A man.

Contrary to popular belief, we (millennials) can't be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans.