Prayer is awe before an infinite force, and yet it's intimacy with a personal friend.

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.

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

If we have not seen our sin and sought radical forgiveness from God, we will be unable to forgive and to seek the good of those who have wronged us.

A sense of Jesus’ absence might be a sign of his presence- a sign that he’s working already in your life.

No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we have put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends and family, and successful with our career — something will inevitably ruin it.

Power, approval, comfort, and control are meta-idols that hold sway over our daily lives.