“Yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

Faith is not primarily a function of how you feel.

Love is the effort and desire to make someone else everything they were created to be.

When love of one’s people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.

Men, you’ll never be a good groom to your wife unless you’re first a good bride to Jesus.

The resurrection was God’s way of stamping PAID IN FULL right across history so that nobody could miss it.

If you want God’s grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing. But that kind of spiritual humility is hard to muster.

If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.

Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.

You can’t live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find a place.

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking.

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.’

Many times people think if God has called you to something, he’s promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.

We have to be careful not to elevate our preferences to moral standards and judge others by them. We only do so to feel superior.

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning of life, and identity then it is an idol.

We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.

Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him.

I don’t think Israel can accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities any more than the United States could accept an al Qaeda base next to New York City.

The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it.

There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.

The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

You continually have to ask yourself what club to play, where to aim it, whether to accept a safe par or to try to go for a birdie. You can’t play every hole the same way. I never could.

Any cooperation that doesn’t go through the Syrian government is not legal. If it’s not legal, we cannot cooperate with, and we don’t recognize and we don’t accept.

I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

I am there for the best interests of the fighters, I want them to win. If they don’t accept that, bye bye.