“The union Christ had with the Father was the greatest that we can conceive of in this life-if indeed we can conceive of it.”

The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.

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.

Of course, we do the righteous deed because of our redemption, not for our redemption.

I’m practicing the discipline of not having to have the last word.

Even professing Christians, by and large, devote to their spiritual growth and well-being a tiny fraction of the time they devote to their body, and it is even tinier fraction if we include what they worry about.

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

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.

God’s address is at the end of your rope.

When the light comes into a room, we do not have to say, “Now what are we going to do about the darkness?” It’s gone!

God may not guide us in an obvious way because he wants us to make decisions based on faith and character.

We are becoming who we will be-forever.

Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.

Grace is not just about forgiveness but about life.

A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying “Why?

We are invited to make a pilgrimage – into the heart and life of God.

The more we pray, the more we think to pray, and as we see the results of prayer-the responses of our Father to our requests-our confidence in God’s power spills over into other areas of our life.

I’m able to express myself and not get made fun of for it.

But you will still look Chinese, and when people meet you, they’ll see a Chinese girl no matter how well you speak English.

Sometimes my day is crammed full of people and talk and yet I have the feeling of living in utter peace and quiet. And the tree outside my window, in the evenings, is a greater experience than all those people put together.

We tend to be preoccupied by our problems when we have a heightened sense of vulnerability and a diminished sense of power. Today, see each problem as an invitation to prayer.

In gold sandals / dawn like a thief / fell upon me.

What cannot be said will be wept.

It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.

To compete at the Olympic Games