God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.

In religion, you obey because God is useful. In Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful.

Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.

Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It 's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God .

Occasionally God rips aside the veil, and you begin to see this very fact: All things happen for you. All things. Everything is knit together.

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.