Christianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute."

Only the Holy Spirit can comfort a person in the depths of grief.

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.

Grace is the most dangerous, expectation-wre cking, smile-creating, counterintuitiv e reality there is.

Graciousness is the fruit of someone who knows how badly they themselves need grace.

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

There's absolutely no way you can feel the freedom to embarrass and humiliate yourself unless you have finally recognized that your identity is in someone other than yourself.