You change your life by changing your heart.
God gives us people to love and things to use, not things to love and people to use.
I believe a personal relationship with God is healthy, but organized religion has potential for danger, in whatever faith.
I believe for God not to allow pain to happen in the world is for Him to extract free will from the world.
Religion is intended to facilitate hope and faith. Much like a path is intended to facilitate a journey.
When we’re in the middle of a difficult time, we have to speak against that lie that says, “God is not here.” We have to draw near to God.
The Bible teaches us that God does not cause pain, but that He uses pain and evil to advance His cause and shape His servants.
Every faith has its story; every faith has its roots.
The wonder of a free-market society is that we can all do our best to package our message in an entertaining fashion and present it – and then everybody votes with their footsteps.
Ggrace is God’s best idea – it’s His decision to ravage people by love, to rescue passionately, and to restore justly.
Waiting is an expectant patience. It’s a patience that says, “I don’t know what God is going to do, but I know God is going to do something.”
Staying engaged with God is absolutely essential for getting through a tough time.
All my books come out of sermons, and I’m really a pastor who writes rather than a writer who pastors.
He saw you cast into a river of life you didn’t request. He saw you betrayed by those you love. He saw you with a body that gets sick and a heart that grows weak. He saw you in your own garden of gnarled trees and sleeping friends. He saw you staring into the pit of your own failures and the mouth of your own grave. He saw you in your own garden of Gethsemane and he didn’t want you to be alone... He would rather go to hell for you than to heaven without you.
How can a person deal with anxiety? You might try what one fellow did. He worried so much that he decided to hire someone to do his worrying for him. He found a man who agreed to be his hired worrier for a salary of $200,000 per year. After the man accepted the job, his first question to his boss was, “Where are you going to get $200,000 per year?” To which the man responded, “That’s your worry.
You’ll get through this. You fear you won’t. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave. Here in the pits, surrounded by steep walls and angry brothers, we wonder, Will this gray sky ever brighten? This load ever lighten? We feel stuck, trapped, locked in. Predestined for failure. Will we ever exit this pit? Yes! Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras: bold, brassy, and everywhere.
The more radical the change, the greater the joy. And it’s worth every effort, for this is the joy of God.
Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart – poisoned as it is with pride and pain – and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn’t just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you.
For you to be healthy, you must rest. Slow down, and God will heal you. He will bring rest to your mind, to your body, and most of all to your soul. He will lead you to green pastures.
God has given us peace in our pain. He covers us all the time. Even when we are out of control, he is still there.