Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith.
The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian-especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the kingdom of God.
Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change. There the light of God first begins to move upon us through the word of Christ, and there the divine Spirit begins to direct our will to God and his way.
Grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort.
The first act of love is always the giving of attention.
When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it.
It’s very difficult to be right about something without hurting someone with it.
It is the responsibility of every Christ-centred follower to carve out a satisfying life under the loving rule of God or else sin will start to look good.
A disciple is a person who has decided that the most important thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do.
Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another.
Find a person who has embraced anger, and you will find a person with a wounded ego.
Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.
Play is the creation of value that is not necessary.
Reality is what you can count on.
Projects of personal transformation rarely if ever succeed by accident, drift or imposition.
God does not ‘love’ us without liking us...
Kingdom obedience is kingdom abundance.
No one need worry about our getting the best of God in some bargain with him, or that we might somehow succeed in using him for our purposes. Anyone who thinks this is a problem has seriously underestimated the intelligence and agility of our Father in the heavens. He will not be tricked or cheated.
The humility that cringes in order that reproof may be escaped or favor obtained is as unchristian as it is profoundly immoral.
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.