The only thing that frees you from the need to pretend in order to make people believe you are something when you are actually not is the gospel because the gospel tells you that identity, my meaning, my security, and all of those things are in Christ.
There’s nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.
To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible’s radically disproportionate focus on God’s saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.
The best evangelists, the best preachers, the best teachers are desperate people.
When God saved me, He gave me a thirst to learn and to read and to study. I thrived in college. I got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and then went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.
When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God’s love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done.
Disobedience happens not when we think too much grace but when we think too little of it.
If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.
My job is not to show my children that I’m the man, but to show them that Christ is the man.
When you don’t have anything to lose, you discover something wonderful: you’re free to take great risks without fear or reservation.
What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root.
The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.
The gospel sets us free to become the romantic leaders of our marriages without fright or hesitation. Because we have been forever wooed by Jesus, we are now free to forever woo our wives.
An identity based in the one-way love of God does not take into account public opinion or, thankfully, even personal opinion.
The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves – a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom.
Between writing, traveling, speaking, preaching, and doing my best to be a good husband to my wife and my three kids, that’s about as much as one man or at least this man can do.
A biblical understanding of the Christian life is not ‘let go and let God,’ it’s ‘trust God and get going.’
My struggle isn’t believing my performance can earn God’s favor; my struggle is believing my performance can keep God’s favor.
Explanations are a substitute for trust.
To progress is always to begin again.