“If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.”

Yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.

If the church does not identify with the marginalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God’s poetic justice.

If we have not seen our sin and sought radical forgiveness from God, we will be unable to forgive and to seek the good of those who have wronged us.

The cross is the place where the Judge takes the Judgment.

Success and suffering will either darken your heart or make you wise, but they won’t leave you where you were.

The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it.

The infallible test of spiritual integrity, Jesus says, is your private prayer life.

When Job was prospering, he prayed. When he was suffering, he still prayed.

Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, ‘My life for your life.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

If you love anything in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations.

The reason the stone was rolled away on Jesus’s tomb was not so that Jesus could get out, but so that we could get in.

Christians tend to motivate others with guilt. We tend to say: You would do this if you were really committed Christians, indicating that we are committed and all that is needed is for others to become as good as we are!

The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life.

Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community – the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study.

There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile.

On the Internet, you think everything is going to be public.

I’d rather go around in a good pair of jeans that you don’t wash every day, because they get more and more comfortable.

I started selling out comedy clubs before I got to town with no advertising. I was selling out theaters just on the rumor that I was going to be there.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

I don’t do talk shows or go on Dr. Phil’s show. He’s a friend of mine, and, no, he doesn’t give me any advice. He doesn’t give solicited advice.

I’ve got a great cigar collection – it’s actually not a collection, because that would imply I wasn’t going to smoke every last one of ’em.

The more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.