Love is the effort and desire to make someone else everything they were created to be.

Because we put ourselves in God’s place, He put Himself in our place.

If you don't feel like praying, pray to God to give you the desire.

If you're avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless you and save you, then you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper, but ironically you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God.

If you seek to serve people more than to gain power, you will not only serve people, you will gain influence.

Fear, logic, and tradition are not going to make you live a good life when no one is looking.

The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.