The joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy – and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.
God appoints people who do disappoint – to point to a God who never disappoints.
Once you have tasted conviction, you can’t bear to keep swallowing complacency.
Real Love truthfully sees the flaws – and still really loves fully.
The frame of a soul was never made for fame. The frame of a soul was made to serve.
On the night He was betrayed Jesus broke bread and lifted it up and gave THANKS. If Jesus can give thanks in that, can we not give thanks in all?
Gratitude’s not a natural posture. The prince of darkness is ultimately a spoiled ingrate, and I’ve spent most of my life as kin to the fist-shaker.
The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything.
The message of Christmas is not that we can make peace. Or that we can make love, make light, make gifts, or make this world save itself. The message of Christmas is that this world’s a mess and we can never save ourselves from ourselves and we need a Messiah.
What is time for if not to bless?
I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.
God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.
Any kind of love that lacks the iron of the Cross in it, is anemic love.
Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering.
Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things.
How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?
God gives us time. And who has time for God?
Sometimes, too often, I don’t want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier.
Going ahead in the midst of the stressful circumstances and giving thanks in that moment – you can’t simultaneously feel stress and gratitude at the same time. So as a parent, to go ahead and start to give thanks to God resets the whole family.
Life isn’t an emergency. Christ is in charge of every moment of the day; nothing catches Him off guard.
I don’t think of myself as an author. But simply as a grateful child of God. John 3:27 has long been a life verse: “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.” Any more words will only be solely a gift from Him. I can only faithfully wait.