The future is already won, and the more hostile the culture, the easier it is to communicate the difference of Christianity.
The human race doesn’t need more books telling them what to do. They need the power to do what they already know.
Every religion has a prophet who is pointing people to God. Jesus is the only one who says, ‘I am God, and I am coming to find you.’
In a smaller church your pastoring sets up your preaching. In a larger church your preaching sets up your pastoring.
Suffering dispels the illusion that we have the strength and competence to rule our own lives and save ourselves.
If you have a small view of your sin, God’s grace will be small to you.
When people say, “God is love,” I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in Christian conception, God really has love as his essence.
Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God.
The main human problems often are that we misidentify what will make us happy; and we ask people and things to save us beyond their ability.
Nobody who understands the free grace of God takes sin lightly.
The church should be a place where people can be free to say that they are sinners.
Prayer can be simple, but it’s not easy. Nothing great is.
If his suffering did not make Jesus give up on us, nothing will.
The gospel is not just the “ABCs” but the “A-to-Z” of the Christian life.
Legalism is looking to something besides Jesus Christ in order to be acceptable and clean before God.
Public faith means going public with what’s in your heart, with humility and respect for others, as we speak of the truth of the gospel.
Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change.
At the cross, we see the worst that sin can do, as humanity – of which each one of us is a part – crucified the Lord. But at the cross, we also see that the most that sin can do cannot thwart God’s salvation.
If God wiped out all sources of evil in the world we would no longer be here, the evil is inside us.
The Christian faith gives us a new conception of work as the means by which God loves and cares for his world through us.