Maturity is produced through relationships and community.

You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

Faith is choosing and believing God's dream for your life. Nothing starts happening in your life until you start dreaming. God gave you the ability to dream, to create, to imagine.

The next sentence is one of the most important spiritual truths you will ever learn: God develops the fruit of the Spirit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you're tempted to express the exact opposite quality. Character development always involves a choice, and temptation provides that opportunity.

The most common way Jesus comes into our lives is through a broken heart.

You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. ... Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you!

We discover that meaning and purpose only when we make God the reference point of our lives.