“I’m convinced that there is nothing that can happen to me in this life that is not precisely designed by a sovereign Lord to give me the opportunity to learn to know Him.”

A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace.

We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.

If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look ‘little’ or ‘big’.

Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ”in spirit and in truth.” Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.

When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).

I believe with all my heart God’s Story has a happy ending. . . But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.

The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.

No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.

Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.

I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.

It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for

It is imperative that good people, men and women of principle, be involved in the political process; otherwise we abdicate power to those whose designs are almost entirely selfish.

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

What breaks your heart is part of a divine design to bring change!

My existence was not random, nor was it an accident. God knew who He was creating, and He designed met for a specific work.

All my tattoos except my first were not planned. I would just go into the shop late at night with friends and ask for something on the spot. My first is my parents’ wedding date. I thought it would soften the blow of getting a tattoo.

Clothes are fun. The designers have so much fun making them, you should have fun wearing them, too.

A large number of us have developed a feeling that architects tend to design houses for the approval of fellow architects and critics, not for the tenants.

I desire your design for me, lord. Make of me what you will.