“Peace does not lie in getting God to give me other circumstances. Peace lies in finding God in these circumstances.”

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.

Prayer allows us to wait without worry.

Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.

Passion for our work is not usually a subterranean volcano waiting to erupt. It is a muscle that gets strengthened a little each day as we show up – as we do what is expected of us, and then some.

Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.

Grace is the offer of God’s ceaseless presence and irrational love that cannot be stopped.

When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.

Peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in the boat.

If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.

Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.

Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.

The goal is not for us to get through the Scriptures. The goal is to get the Scriptures through us.

The test of love is that it gives even when there is no expectation of a return.

The Holy Spirit will lead you to be with people as Jesus would be with them if He were in your place.

Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?.

What repeatedly enters your mind and occupies your mind, eventually shapes your mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, in no event may my image or name or any music or any artistic property created by me be used for advertising purposes.

sometimes we do not realize how much we have to be grateful for until it is threatened.

The present will not long endure.

We know we can’t be spiritually transformed by just focusing on the will.

I personally am not a team player in that manner.

That’s the illusion – the idea that you can be all right on the inside and not act it out – and it has affected us in many ways. That’s a part of the idea that professing is enough.