The church is often like a football stadium where 22 people need a rest and thousands of people need exercise.

We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.

The common moral framework: Do anything as long as it does no harm to others. Problem: Whose definition of harm?

What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

Revival occurs as a group of people who, on the whole, think they already know the gospel discover they do not really or fully know it, and by embracing the gospel they cross over into living faith.

There's nothing that makes you more miserable (or less interesting) than self-absorption .

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.