“The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from…Circumcision of the heart.”

You cannot trust Jesus in areas in which you don’t think him competent.

There is no avoiding the fact that we live at the mercy of our ideas This is never more true than with our ideas about God.

The sinner is not the one who uses a lot of grace. The saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on take off.

Discipline, strictly speaking, is activity carried on to prepare us indirectly for some activity other than itself. We do not practice the piano to practice the piano well, but to play it well.

Keep eternity before the children.

Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.

Spiritual transformation into Christ-likeness in not going to happen unless we act. What transforms us is the will to obey Jesus Christ.

The truly powerful ideas are precisely the ones that never have to justify themselves.

To allow lust (or strong desires) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God’s.

Bodily pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. But when it is exalted to a necessity and we become dependent upon it, then we are slaves of our body and its feelings. Only misery lies ahead.

The will is transformed by experience, not information.

The open secret of many Bible believing Churches is that a vanishingly small percentage of those talking about prayer and Bible reading are actually doing what they are talking about.

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.

This life is not something that is imposed upon us; we receive it and work with it.

Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?

Theology is a part of our lives. It’s unavoidable. A thoughtless theology guides our lives with just as much force as a thoughtful and informed one.

We’re really just the frosting on a cake and we don’t know what’s inside the cake.

She is the storm and the rainbow that comes after.

The language of silence is the language of God, the language of silence is the language of the heart.

It is customary these days to ignore what should be done in favour of what pleases us.

You have eaten a meal dangerously seasoned.

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.

A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree

It is not even a protection if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams