In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?
The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God’s will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.
Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.
The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.
Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.
Sin and the child of God are incompatible. They may occasionally meet; they cannot live together in harmony.
Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.
The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.
Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.
Simplicity is the first cousin of contentment.
The concept of substitution lies at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.
Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured in terms of obedience.
The Christian’s chief occupational hazards are depression and discouragement.
It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.
Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.
A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.
Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and checkered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture .
All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousn ess, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.
It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.
Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God’s call to us to do so.