Jesus was much more interested in the quality of the people's response to him than in the quantity of the crowd.

I've heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. "You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God." But that's answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can't avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it.

The essence of Christian obedience is not do’s and don’ts but personal allegiance to Jesus.

One of the most frequent responses I get from non-Christian readers is: 'I'm not sure I agree with all this, but I must say this is the first book I've read by a Christian that didn't treat me like I was an idiot.'

Christians don't believe that goodness gets you to heaven. Christians believe it's exhausting to rely on your own goodness to please God.

All I know is, if I don't care about the poor, if my church doesn't care about the poor, that's evil.

Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.