When you experience God it is deeply personal, but it's not at all private.

Easter means that Christmas worked.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.

I wouldn't venture to say which kind of sin is more prevalent. I wouldn't even want to try to characterize certain 'circles.'

Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.

At the cross, we see the worst that sin can do, as humanity - of which each one of us is a part - crucified the Lord. But at the cross, we also see that the most that sin can do cannot thwart God's salvation.

Bad evangelism says: I'm right, you're wrong, and I would love to tell you about it