Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.

A Christian is one who stops working to be saved, not one who stops working!

If God does not have our highest allegiance, we will use prayer to try to get things that have that designation.

It is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.

The church is not a museum for pristine saints, but a hospital ward for broken sinners.