The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion.

The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

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.

In a smaller church your pastoring sets up your preaching. In a larger church your preaching sets up your pastoring.

You won't be able to change the world, yourself, anything, if you don't change yourself inwardly, deeply, enduringly.

We are saved by a man who died loving his enemies.