Jesus has done everything for you.
Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.
You can be sure that your deepest desires reveal important truths about your spiritual condition.
There is no better story in the Old Testament, or perhaps the whole Bible, for depicting the difference between the ladder-defined life and the cross-defined life than that of the Tower of Babel.
In ‘Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels,’ I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God’s grace as the sailors and the Ninevites.
I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively.
I enjoy receiving love from my wife. I’m ecstatic when Kim loves me and expresses affection toward me. Something in me comes alive when she does that. But I’ve learned this freeing truth: I don’t need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need.
I ended up dropping out of high school at 16 and getting kicked out of my home. My parents told me, sadly, that because I was so disruptive to the rest of the household, that I could no longer live under their roof.
Hollywood is not known as a culture of grace. Dog-eat-dog is more like it. People love you one day and hate you the next. Personal value is very much attached to box office revenues and the unpredictable and often cruel winds of fashion.
Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.
Walking with God doesn’t lead to God’s favor; God’s favor leads to walking with God.
Grace is the most dangerous, expectation-wre cking, smile-creating, counterintuitiv e reality there is.
Grace loves without reference to what may or may not happen-which is precisely why such incredible things do happen!
A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance.
When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people’s.
The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.
The law is God’s first word; the gospel is God’s final word.
Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. Thats not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; its a witness to God making it down to the worst people.
Holy Saturday. The best reminder that the silence of God doesn’t equal the absence of God.
Graciousness is the fruit of someone who knows how badly they themselves need grace.