I grew up in a remarkable home, the middle of seven children. My parents raised us well. They loved us well. We laughed hard growing up. But being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home, whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some bad decisions about who I hung out with, I dropped out of high school, got kicked out of the house.

Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.

Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.

What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.

If we're not reaching the same people Jesus reached, then we're not preaching the same message Jesus preached.

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.

I actually think one of most profoundly and deep pastoral moments between a pastor and his church is what happens between them before God in the context of preaching.