Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other.
A preacher who doesn’t believe he’s that bad will attract people who don’t think they’re that bad. And that’s bad.
Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.
I actually think one of most profoundly and deep pastoral moments between a pastor and his church is what happens between them before God in the context of preaching.
Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top.
Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.
If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.
The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.
My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.
I was spending too much time thinking about how I was doing, if I was learning everything I was supposed to be learning during this difficult season, whether I was doing it right or not, taking my spiritual pulse, etc – my inner lawyer was working overtime.
The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.
The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands – introducing chaos and freedom.
I became frustrated with myself for not being as sturdy and unquestioning as I knew a man in my position should be.
Only when you realize that the gospel has nothing to do with your obedience but with Christ’s obedience for you, will you start to obey. The only Christians who end up getting better are those who realize that if they don’t get better, God will love them anyway.
The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation.
I had turned personal validation into my primary source of meaning and value, so that without it I was miserable and depressed.
The deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.
To focus on how I’m doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism.
The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I’d been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered.
The world isn’t scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.