“When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”

Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ”in spirit and in truth.” Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.

When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).

I believe with all my heart God’s Story has a happy ending. . . But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise.

Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.

The willingness to be and to have just what God wants us to be and have, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else, would set our hearts at rest, and we would discover the simpler life, the greater peace.

No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.

Remind me that not everything needs to be said, and that there are very few things that need to be said by me.

I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.

It is impossible to love deeply without sacrifice.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy. It never denies reality. It stands in the very teeth of suffering.

Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for

What God gives in answer to our prayers will always be the thing we most urgently need, and it will always be sufficient.

Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?

There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for.

The deepest lessons come out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires.