Looking back, I see now that I’ve come to know God more in the pastures, and wildernesses, and white spaces, and valleys than I have on the mountaintops.
Peter Drucker says that the worst kind of failure in business is success in the things that don’t matter.
Whatever you’re good at, do it well for the glory of God, and do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.
This means that when someone claims to be filled with the Spirit and yet spends most of his time talking about his own experiences with the Spirit, you have reason to doubt whether he really is filled with the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit speaks through someone, you tend to forget about the person speaking. You don’t even really think about the Holy Spirit. You find yourself thinking about Jesus.
Make the gospel the center of your life. Turn to it when you are in pain. Let it be the foundation of your identity. Ground your confidence in it. Run to it when your soul feels restless. Take solace there in times of confusion and comfort there in times of regret. Dwell on it until righteous passions for God spring up with in you. Let it inspire you to God-centered, death-defying dreams for His glory.
Fullness of the Spirit and depth in the gospel are inseparable, and one always leads you to the other.
I do enough public speaking that I rarely get nervous in front of crowds anymore, but backstage before the event, I was a nervous wreck. I mean, really nervous – like ‘Joel Osteen about to address The Gospel Coalition’ kind of nervous.
The Spirit inside of us is greater than even Jesus beside us.
God steers moving ships – ships driven by the winds of worship, gratefulness, love to God for what he’s done, and compassion for those he cares about.
The vibrant Christian life is a union of clarity in the Word and openness to the Spirit.
We want a God who will restore us to peaceful equilibrium, take away our stress, and promise us a blissful afterlife. Most Christians haven’t rejected God; they have just reduced him.
Our mission, according to Jesus, is not to gather audiences, but to grow disciples.
In the same way, there are points you can never pass spiritually until you are confident that Jesus will support the full weight of your soul. There are sacrifices you’ll never make and commands you’ll never obey unless you are convinced of their eternal value.
Faith that looks anywhere else but Christ will find not assurance but incessant doubt. Only by resting entirely in his finished work can the troubled soul find peace.
Another reason God often leads us through dark, silent valleys is that he wants to purify our hearts. Why do we want to be close to God? Is it because of what he gives us, or is it simply because we want him? What is more valuable to us: God or his blessings? Sometimes God withholds everything from us except his promises in order to make us ask ourselves, “Is this – his promise – enough for me?
Most people hope that they are “good enough” to earn God’s approval, to get on His “A-list.” Comparatively speaking, they think, their sins have not been that bad. So as long as God grades on the curve they’ll be fine. But this is direct defiance of “the testimony” God has given about Jesus. If we could have been “good enough,” would Jesus really have had to die? What kind of God would have done that to Jesus if there were another way?
We shouldn’t be waiting for voices when we already have verses.
A church is not a group of people gathered around a leader, but a leadership factory.
But this kind of motivation never lasts. Guilt produces a dramatic, knee-jerk reaction, but the human spirit has mechanisms for getting beyond guilt. We assuage it by comparing ourselves positively with others. We rationalize our indulgences. We numb ourselves to others’ pain. “Smacking” us with guilt never produces sustained generosity.
Planting always involves risk. We release control of something we need in the hopes that it will come back to us in multiplied measure. But once we let go of it, we forfeit any ability to use it for ourselves. Seeds you plant you can no longer consume. Yet without the act of planting, there will never be a harvest.
Once saved, always saved but also, once saved, forever following.