“Over and over in the Bible, it is fear that threatens to keep people from trusting and obeying God.”

We are too often double espresso followers of a decaf Sovereign.

Make your life about something bigger than your life.

To become truly free, you must surrender.

The Holy Spirit says: You are it. You are God’s plan. In a thirsty world, people need to be refreshed. It is a broken world, and people need to be healed. Now get out there and do it!

The good news as Jesus preached it is not just about the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when you die. It is about the glorious redemption of human life-your life.

The character of the faith that allows us to be transformed by suffering and darkness is not doubt-free certainty; rather, it is tenacious obedience.

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.

The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.

Jesus is mysterious not just because of what we don’t know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

Genuine brokenness pleases God more than pretend spirituality.

Disciplined people can do the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason.

Self-improvement is no more God’s plan than self-salvation.

I hate how hard spiritual transformation is and how long it takes. I hate thinking about how many people have gone to church for decades and remain joyless or judgmental or bitter or superior.

For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

The greatest moment of your life is now. This moment is God’s irreplaceable gift to you.

Who you become while you’re waiting is as important as what you’re waiting for.

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple… It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.

When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.

Obedience is a penance of reason, and, on that account, a sacrifice more acceptable than all corporal penances and mortifications.

God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.

Choices will continually be necessary and — let us not forget — possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.

God prefers your health, and your obedience, to your penance.

It is not hard to obey when we love the one whom we obey.

Obedient people never trust in themselves.