It fits to glorify God - it not only fits reality, because God is infinitely and supremely praiseworthy, but it fits us as nothing else does. All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places - and all the love we have looked for in the arms of other people - is only fully present in God himself. And so in every action by which we treat him as glorious as he is, whether through prayer, singing, trusting, obeying, or hoping, we are at once giving God his due and fulfilling our own design.

Grace is to be let into a place that you don't have a right to be.

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

There seems to be a human instinct for prayer. Swiss theologian Karl Barth calls it our 'incurable God-sickness.'

If his suffering did not make Jesus give up on us, nothing will.

It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul's prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances.

In a smaller church your pastoring sets up your preaching. In a larger church your preaching sets up your pastoring.