The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage.

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.

The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you".

We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

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

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

Whether it's a Christian or a non-Christian, there's nothing like suffering to show us how small, needy, and not in control we are. Suffering has a way of sobering us up to the realization that we can't make it on our own, that we need help, that we're broken.