“Religion: ‘My identity is built on being a good person.’ Gospel: ‘My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on Christ’s.’”

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior.

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe.

…Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don’t develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us – denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him – and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.

In the original language, ‘Fear the Lord’ doesn’t mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.

Are you living to justify yourself, or are you living because you are justified?

You are more sinful than you could dare imagine and you are more loved and accepted than you could ever dare hope.

Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.

Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.

The way to find your calling is to look at the way you were created. Your gifts have not emerged by accident.

The gospel humbles us into the dust and at the very same time exalts us to the heavens.

Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.

The key question in order to change you is not ‘What would Jesus do?’ but “What has Jesus done for you?”

Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.

You are a totally loved moral failure.

When Christ at Cana’s feast by pow’r divine, Inspir’d cold water, with the warmth of wine, See! cry’d they while, in red’ning tide, it gush’d, The bashful stream hath seen its God and blush’d.

I thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science.

This is our high calling, to represent Christ, and act in His behalf, and in His character and spirit, under all circumstances and toward all men.

There is a word Kristos in the Greek dictionary, and this word is supposed to be borrowed from the Sanskrit word “Krishna,” and Christ is derived from Kristos.

We cannot ask in behalf of Christ what Christ would not ask Himself if He were praying.

In Jesus Christ on the Cross, there is refuge; there is safety; there is shelter; and all the power of sin upon our track cannot reach us when we have taken shelter under the Cross that atones for our sins.

May God so fill us today with the heart of Christ that we may glow with the divine fire of holy desire.

One touch of Christ is worth a lifetime of struggling.