Your prayer for someone may or may not change them, but it always changes YOU.
There is no sin too great for God’s grace. There is no habit too big for his healing. There is no label too strong for his love.
Don’t worry when you meet opposition for obeying God. Worry when you don’t have opposition, because you’re probably not obeying God.
No matter what I feel, I hold the assurance that God never leaves me.
But God does give us responsibility, and it takes biblical faith to do those things in dependence on God.
Love keeps no record of wrongs, but bitterness keeps detailed accounts.
If you allow your enemy to steal your faith, he can destroy your life and ultimately kill your relationship with God.
When it’s clear that we have a commitment to God that comes before anything else in our lives, most people will respect us even if they don’t share our faith.
Normal people attempt countless goals with limited success. Weird people focus on just one God-given objective with tremendous results.
The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people.
If we don’t fear God, it’s because we don’t know God.
Many people may be heartbroken, but not enough to take action.
Sex joins two people spiritually and emotionally as well as physically. This is its purpose-to bond a couple together. Sex connects and fuses people together.
Wise people put as much distance between themselves and sexual temptation as possible. They not only get away but also plan their escape route.
In order to honor God with your wealth, you first have to admit that you are rich. Most people won’t do that. It’s not normal.
Extreme measures bring extreme results. If you want a normal life, do what normal people do. If you want to know God intimately, walk with Him daily, and please Him in every way, you’re going to have to do what few do. Absolutely nothing.
Normal people live distracted, rarely fully present. Weird people silence the distractions and remain fully in the moment.
Face your fears by remembering the power of God’s cleaning truth. To change the way you are, change the way you think.
Rather than continuing on the normal sexual path toward pain, emptiness, and idolatry, you can allow God to heal you, change the way you think, and place deliberate safeguards in your life to protect you.
But just as your body needs sleep, your soul needs time to rest in God. To learn more about Him. To talk to Him. To worship and praise Him. To fellowship with other brothers and sisters.
If you delegate tasks, you create followers, if you delegate authority , you create leaders
If you catch yourself wondering why you want more of the world and you’re not satisfied with God, it’s because you have a spiritual problem.
God decided that this time in history was perfect for you to glorify Him and make an eternal difference. So God gave you unique gifts, talents, passions, and experiences to propel you into your life purpose.
The Bible consistently and directly indicates that when we give generously, we’re serving, honoring, and glorifying God. After all, generosity is fundamental to God’s nature.
You release the pain of the past and press on. It’s a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He wants to take you to a new place, to transform you into a new person.
When you believe marriage is your answer, you’ll often give something that eventually hurts you both.
Pause for a moment and prayerfully consider your response: What breaks your heart?
He puts us here to make an eternal difference.He puts us here to show everyone around us how much He loves them.He puts us here to be His hands and feet, His body and His heart.
She asked God to use this experience to help my heart break forever for those who don’t know Christ.
I think God eventually changed my heart simply because I clung to my desire for Him, even though I wasn’t sure how to follow through on that desire.
Renew your mind by washing it with truth: God’s Word.
If you pour everything you have into this life, this world, which is temporary and fading, you’re jeopardizing your relationship with God, the only thing that’s eternal.
Weird makes you truly sexy in a way the world can never know.
Will you have the courage to obey the voice of God?
Fueled by faith and passion for our true priorities we’re going to drive against traffic in order to find rest, refreshment, and time for what matters most in life.
Reality ground my expectations into microscopic particles.
Our minds are so cluttered with endless to-do lists that there’s no room for us to experience the joy in being alive today.
Inspire them to want so much more than what’s normal.
When we front a fiction, we are destined for loneliness.
Instead of drifting away from God, you’ll be firmly anchored, able to swim against the tide, offering living water to all you meet.
Paul’s one thing was committing to forget about the past, to forge ahead into the future.
Jesus never criticized prayers that were honest, only those that were long and showy.
Although we’re made right with God by faith, and not by works, the effectiveness of our prayers is often tied to the holiness of our lives.
You’ve never really know what it’s like to trust God to provide for you today, because you’ve got today provided for. And probably tomorrow too. Maybe even into next winter, with all the food socked away in that extra freezer in the garage.
But don’t ever forget: adultery is also biblical grounds for forgiveness, healing, and restoration.
He is the God who loved you so much that His Son stripped Himself of all heavenly glory to live as an impoverished Jewish carpenter so He could shed His blood, suffer, and die for the forgiveness of our sins.
My friends don’t think they’re rich, because they know someone who’s richer.
For many of us, it’s just one thing standing in our way of completely following Jesus.
Most of all, we remain focused on our Rock that never moves.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, He has given you abundance so that you can care for others, not so you can stock up on capri pants for next summer or afford a leather interior in the new SUV.
We can give away all that He entrusts to us in the same spirit of generosity.
If you had a friend you refused to talk to, eventually you couldn’t keep calling that person a friend anymore.
I’m asking God to give you a Popeye moment. A moment when God blesses you with a divine burden: something that bothers you so deeply, you’re moved from complacency to action.
We may claim to believe in God, but we don’t want to believe so much that it makes us different.
Teach your kids by modeling what you claim to believe.
You don’t believe He knows what’s best for you: that rest will make you more productive and more spiritually healthy.
Tragically, many people have this faithless, wishy-washy mindset, which causes them to lose the battle in their minds before they ever fight it in the world.
Not only did he unleash his emotions through rivers of tears, but for several days he denied his body food so he could pray and seek the God of heaven.
We reflect God’s character the most when we give freely of ourselves with no strings attached, no secret motives, no hidden agenda.
Instead of having just good intentions that are me-centered,you can have God intentions that are God-centered. And when God puts something into you, you can be certain it will come to pass.
I can promise you this: If you really, sincerely, genuinely want God back, He hasn’t moved. He’s still there, just like always, ready to bear-hug you again, just like in the old days.
So if it seems like you’re doing something different from what everyone else is doing, and if sometimes that feels hard, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Without someone speaking into your life and keeping you on track with the things you believe, you have a tendency to drift into habitual sin- and you recognize this about yourself.
You can’t build a foundation of sin now for a life of purity later.
No matter what sin you find yourself in, turn to God. Let Him forgive, heal, and restore.
Like a sneeze, sin feels good at first, but it leaves a huge mess.
One works hard to prop up an illusion that sucks the life out of them, and the other works hard to make their home a place that restores them, nurtures them, and gives life to others.
The answer isn’t more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
Ironically, we often fail to see that whenever we compromise ourselves to please others, we tend to lose their respect.
Sincere doubts, handled properly, can become a gift.
You must long for God more than normal. You must be willing to live to give, not live to gain.
If you want to be different, if you want to be better than normal, then you must live differently.
When I’m focusing on what’s important to God, I live differently. I invest my time differently.
It’s critical to God that we think about how we live, how we spend the present time with which we’re gifted each day.
Training is an active, dynamic process lived out daily in all areas of life- not a rote exercise in memorizing verses and going to church every week.
When did we, as Christ followers, start to think that the church exists for us? When did we forget that we are the church? And that we’re here for the world?
And as you come to know Him, you’re becoming like Him. The more you are like Him, the more different you will be.
You care because God gave you this unusual blessing: a burden to make a difference.
When you feel this burden, you might be frustrated, wondering why no one else cares as much as you do. The reason why you care and others don’t could be because God has aimed it directly at you.
I’m asking God to bless you with something that unsettles you, disturbs you, and upsets you.
What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you’re compelled to act?
On the other hand, when you do something for someone else, there’s often a greater, deeper satisfaction.
He’s for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be.
What one promise do you need to claim? Find it. Don’t give up. Cling to it.
Let God create in you His masterpiece. He will make you truly different and joyfully weird.
How can you tell when the devil is lying? His lips are moving.
When you reach out to God humbly, you’ll find that He’s already reaching out to you.
There’s nothing cool about turning against God. There’s nothing fun or cute or right about compromising who God wanted you to be.
God promises you a way out. Find that way out, and take it.
The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis.
To be fully alive, you need time with God to recharge.
Remember, to get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done. But to get what you once had, you must do what you once did.
He knows every hair on your head, and he sees every tear you shed.
God says happiness is contentment with what you already have, with what He provides you, with what you can share.
And because God has entrusted you with such riches, you can use these resources to make a profound difference in countless lives.
When you give, you will be blessed. When you give, it will be given back to you.
Don’t settle for a normal life. Not when you can enjoy the wonderful weirdness of being who God created you to be.
You have enough time to do everything God wants you to do.
Just because opportunities present themselves doesn’t mean you should accept every one of them. It’s not realistic, and it’s also not wise.
We become weirder parents when we fall more and more in love with Christ.
Bad decisions can pile up to make a wall between you and what God wants you to do.
While some consider God’s standards as too confining, a true believer sees them as loving and freeing.
More important, it’s because God is our only true source of life.
Or maybe they just accept that it’s wrong in God’s eyes, although not in their own, and they’ll worry about sorting it out later.
If the seed doesn’t get planted, it can’t become a toxic thornbush. We must guard our minds and our hearts, starting with our eyes.
I’ve heard it said, “If the Devil can’t make us really bad, then he’ll try to make us really busy.
Most of us think we’re too busy or too important to rest for a day.
Life has trained many of us to think of love as temporary and conditional.
When you accept the fact that your true identity includes being an overcomer, you will never settle for less than a miracle.
If we take a risk, we might not succeed, but if we avoid all risk, we guarantee we won’t succeed, and we miss so much of what God wants us to learn.
We don’t need more time. We need to use the time we already have differently.
I’m convinced normal people miss the majority of God’s blessings because they’re too busy to notice them.
I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.
In fact, if our kids are successful in every normal way, they can still miss God’s main mark.
Someone said that if you’re lonely at the top, it’s because you didn’t take anyone with you.
Sunday is God’s day, and he was committed to honoring it. Just because he was in Paris to compete in the Olympics didn’t justify changing his lifelong commitment.
Endurance is critical if you want to succeed spectacularly at anything God sets before you.
We are far from perfect but willing to be different.
When something small loudly demands all our attention, its noise often drowns out the whisper of what’s enormously important.
…If we believe that God wants us happy above all else, rather than acknowledging that our role is to serve God, we wrongly believe that God exists to serve us. God becomes a a means to our end: happiness.
What matters is the one thing I do know for certain: God is with me.
If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack.