“It is absolutely essential to have a living visible example of what a Christian ought to be.”

If you dont love, youve lost your distinction, definition, uniqueness, and identity.

It’s interesting how people try to redefine God to their liking. They bring him down to their level so they can understand him, then they reject him because he is too much like them.

A moment with Jesus changed everything.

A father doesn’t say, ‘Don’t go that way.’ He says, ‘come follow me.’

Be the same person privately, publically and personally.

Jesus sees our sin more clearly than anyone, yet He loves us more than anyone.

Jesus didn’t care about the scandal. He cared about the scandalous.

Notorious sinners didn’t kill Jesus. Religious people did.

I wonder if we have a lot of sons running around saying, “I want a Dad.” But you won’t abide in anyone.

Don’t you know you are the only Jesus many people will ever see? In compromising your lifestyle, you forfeit your capacity to accurately reflect God’s image and endanger an entire generation’s understanding of Jesus.

God is not in a hurry to fix us. Our behavior is not his first priority. We are his first priority. Loving us, knowing us, affirming us, protecting us. That is his top goal and his main concern.

Sometimes God takes your life for some crazy twists and turns.

What we do on Sunday absolutely doesn’t matter unless it meets us on Monday. Changes us on Monday. Transforms us on Monday.

Rules are not bad, but they can’t save anyone.

We need to abandon our scale and adopt God’s because our misguided labels keep us from the right kind of interaction with people.

The Bible is meant to be down-to-earth. It was written for real people facing real issues.

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things… one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.

There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.

It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things.

What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you.

Do not feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them! Remember that one: they are to be expected; two: they’re the first and most essential part of the learning process; and three: feeling bad about them will prevent you from getting better.

Infinite Love is who we really are and who we refuse to be. This refusal is our most essential tension.