“When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.”

The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust — not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.

What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions.

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle with lust, greed, and pride still rages within us.

In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.

Whatever we have done in the past, be it good or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only NOW that we are in the presence of God.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means.

If in our hearts we really don’t believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.

Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. IT IS AN ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace.

How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!

We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.

Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.

Honestly, are we ever going to get over ‘California Girls’ by Katy Perry? I know it’s old, but that song – I love that song!

You say how you feel, and songs don’t lie. Songs are the most honest form of human expression there is–there’s nothing that lies about a song.

We can exterminate Ku Kluxism better by recognizing their honesty and teaching them that they are wrong.

I’m just kind of taking what I get and making the best out of it, honestly.

When you do something with a lot of honesty, appetite and commitment, the input reflects the output.

You don’t have to be good to be Jesus’s friend. You just have to be honest.

I’m always open, and will criticize myself, too. And I just think being that honest with everybody puts you in a different space than somebody who’s just shooting venom at a certain group or a certain amount of individuals.

Honestly, my goal is just to let people hear my story and just like, feed everybody that could relate to my story in any way.