As many have learned and later taught, you don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God.
Humility is so shy. If you begin talking about it, it leaves.
A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God’s.
How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed non of the religions have?
The only love that won’t disappoint you is one that can’t change, that can’t be lost, that is not based on the ups and downs of life or of how well you live. It is something that not even death can take away from you. God’s love is the only thing like that.
Only in Jesus Christ do we see how the untamable, infinite God can become a baby and a loving Savior. On the cross we see how both the love and the holiness of God can be fulfilled at once.
Love is counting someone else’s needs and interests as more important than your own needs or interests or comfort.
The gospel destroys pride because it tells us we are so lost that Jesus had to die for us.
All change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart.
Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially ‘deify.’ We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious.
Any person who only sticks with Christianity as long as things are going his or her way, is a stranger to the cross.
When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God’s.
Men, you’ll never be a good groom to your wife unless you’re first a good bride to Jesus.
Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.
If you can’t show the difference between religion and the Gospel, people will confuse morality with a changed heart.
Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.
Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.
Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won’t matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.
The problem with the world is it blames problems on things besides sin and identifies salvation on things besides God.