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.

Jesus may ask of you far more than you planned to give, but He can give to you infinitely more than you dared ask or think.

To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love.

Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it. He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God. He took so that now all suffering that comes into your life will only make you great. A lump of coal under pressure becomes a diamond. And the suffering of a person in Christ only turns you into somebody gorgeous.

Christians necessarily believe we depend on God for everything-a prayerless Christian, then, is a contradiction in terms.

Describe the God you've rejected. Describe the God you don't believe in. Maybe I don't believe in that God either.

Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.