The single most important principle I ever discovered is this: the goal or purpose of the Christian is precisely the pursuit of happiness - in God. The reason for this is that there is no greater way to glorify God than to find in Him the happiness that my soul so desperately craves.

I simply define glory as the beauty of God unveiled. Glory is the resplendent radiance of His power and His personality. Glory is all of God that makes God God, and shows Him to be worthy of our praise and our boasting and our trust and our hope and our confidence and our joy.

Self-image, the concept we have of ourselves, must begin not by looking in the mirror but by looking into the face of God.

The New Testament never once warns us that humbly seeking and praying for spiritual gifts will bring anything other than a blessing.

Many Christians are either woefully deficient in their knowledge of Scripture or noticeably devoid of any experience of God's power. The Lord never intended this for His people. We have all seen firsthand the joyless intellectual arrogance the absence of spiritual power can produce, as well as the fanatical emotional excess that comes from the lack of theological integrity.

Joy is not necessarily the absence of suffering, it is the presence of God.

Sometimes people base their identity on their gifting. But our identity is in Christ and ultimately has no relation to whatever gift the Spirit may have granted to us.