When the church becomes an institution, people are nothing more than volunteers to be recruited. When the church is a movement, our stewardship becomes the unleashing of our God-given gifts, talents, and passions.
When we dwell on the past, we tend to want to live there. When we dream of the future, we want to go there. Our dreams are where God paints a picture of a life waiting to be created.
To be apathetic is literally to be without passion.
Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.
It is not balance you need but adaptability.
Religion as a whole specializes in sin management. It’s all about organizing humanity in such a way that we cause as little damage as possible.
We need both to aspire and accomplish. Without a vision for your life, without a sense of purpose, you will begin to die a slow death.
Your soul craves truth, beauty, wonder, love. Your soul craves to dream, to imagine, and even simply to understand. Your soul craves to connect, to commune, to create.
This thing that haunts you, that never seems satisfied, the cravings in your soul that you are unable to satiate through all the success that the world can bring this is your soul screaming for God.
What is the future you’re creating right now?
Sin creates the illusion of freedom. In the end it fools us into seeking freedom from God rather than finding freedom in God.
Far too often, when we think we are frightened by mystery, the fact is that we are haunted by history.
Love never comes without wounds; faith never comes without failure.
Our citizenship is in eternity; history is our temporary residence.
Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness.
Jesus beckons his followers to a path that’s far from the easy road. It’s a path filled with adventure, uncertainty, and unlimited possibilities – the only path that can fulfill the deepest longings and desires of your heart.
You can plant a church and grow a church. That’s not that hard to do, but it’s harder to be a viable source of transformation in a city or your time or space.
You are both a work of art and an artist at work.
We are all time voyagers leaving history in our wake, pioneering into the future.
I realize that I live on the bubble of insanity. I feel the weight of human suffering, loneliness and despair on me all the time. It’s not getting easier; if anything, it’s always right on the edge of my skin.
It’s not your freedom to choose that makes you free. It’s what you choose in that freedom that makes you free.