“There was no time anymore to be quiet or still or pray. So, in many ways, that’s what led to my downward spin.”

The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.

To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.

The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.

Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.

Beliefs have become unimportant to me. Faith as radical trust became even more important to me.

Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it’s losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.

In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life

I became so attentive to the souls of other people that I was not as attentive as I might have been to my own.

As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

There comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address

When I forget the power of the word, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget the deep relief of telling the truth, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget to look for the holiness all around me, I read Frederick Buechner. When I forget why the gospel matters, I read Frederick Buechner.

I love being alone. I learned that from my father, I think, who loved his own company.

Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.

I think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat.

The biggest enemy to prayer is praying for something you already have.

If you are too busy or too proud to pray with your children, you are too busy and too proud.

We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were killed by lowly murderers.

I’m praying to a God who wants to bear fruit through me, and I am going to trust that he is going to use me tonight. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is. He is faithful.

The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.

You pray for yourself and just ask God to give you strength.

When the praying does no good, insurance does help.

The best gift anyone can give to a friend is to pray for him.