Somebody said that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
Going through open doors means I will have to be able to trust God with my future when the path I’m called to take does not look like the obvious one.
Author and former seminary professor Neal Plantinga once said something amazing about our capacity for addiction. He said it shows that we were wired for ecstasy. Not the drug, but pure, ecstatic joy. Our ceaseless craving for more, though it can kill us when unredeemed, may be a hint of the joy that we were made for when the soul finds its center in God.
The more concerned you are about your own fulfillment, the less fulfilled you will be.
To paraphrase a line from a movie: There will be great pain, and there will be great joy. In the end, joy wins. So if joy has not yet won, it is not yet the end. Jesus is crucified. The pain is overwhelming – not the end. Jesus is risen – the joy is overwhelming.
Ironically, the more obsessed we are with our selves, the more we neglect our souls.
Jesus was often busy, but never hurried.
One of the most impressive aspects of Jesus is how he was impressed by unimpressive people.
All work was designed by God to be priestly work.
Ask God to make your work go well today.
Sin is not just the wrong stuff we do; it’s the good we don’t do. It’s the starving children we don’t want to look at, the volunteering we avoid, the poor we don’t want to serve, and the money we don’t want to give.
The greatest battle of life is spiritual. It is the struggles with resentment and anger and greed and superiority that keep me from living in the flow with God.
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” No, I am its keeper, not its captain. I did not make it, and I cannot save it from death. That’s why soul-care is a different task than self-care. I do not care for my soul only for my own sake. It is only mine on loan, and it is coming due soon.
Don’t wait for passion to lead you somewhere you’re not. Start by bringing passion to the place where you are.
The most important thing in your life,” Dallas said, “is not what you do; it’s who you become. That’s what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.
It may not quite reflect the maturity of “Thy will be done,” but it is better to be an honest mess before God than a dishonest “saint.
The late John Stott wrote, “Paul is not saying he did a careful study of every sinner in human history and found out he came in last place. The truth is, rather, when we are convicted by the Holy Spirit, an immediate result is we give up all such comparisons.” Paul was so vividly aware of his own sins that he could not conceive that anybody could be worse.
The sequence in the Bible is usually not calling; deep feeling of peace about it; decision to obey; smooth sailing. Instead, it’s usually calling; abject terror; decision to obey; big problems; more terror; second thoughts; repeat several times; deeper faith.
The time to love is now. When we love, we enter into the mystery of eternity. Nothing offered in love is ever lost, for this mortal life is not the whole story. This life is to the next a kind of school, a kind of preparation for the me you were meant to be. That person will go into eternity.
Dear God, I sinned yesterday, I sinned again today, and I’m planning to go out and do the same sin tomorrow. In Jesus’ name, Amen.