I've got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we're super spiritual or we've got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won't guarantee that they'll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending.

God's grace is so counterintuitive and everything we do in our life is just based on conditions. You do this for me and I'll do that for you. Or if you don't do this for me, I won't do that for you. And God's grace works in a completely different direction.

When it comes to understanding and appreciating grace, our biggest problem is our so-called goodness...not our self-perceived badness.

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.

The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us.

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

The more I focused on my need to get better the worse I actually got - the more neurotic and self-conscious and self-absorbed I became.