We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.
Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.
God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.
Change came from below, as it usually does, rather than being imposed from above.
Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
All of us in the church need “grace-healed eyes” to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us.
We cannot simply pray and then wait for God to do the rest.
Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.
Fulfillment comes not in pursuit of happiness, but rather in pursuit of service.
The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.
God’s gifts are best used when we give them away in serving those who have less.
But should not atheists have an equal obligation to explain the origin of pleasure in a world of randomness and meaninglessness?
When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.
The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for’, as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions.
Whatever you may believe about it, the birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts. Everything that has ever happened on this planet falls into a category of before Christ or after Christ.
Often a work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response Mary embraced both. She was the first person to accept Jesus on His own terms, regardless of the personal cost.
It seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism.
Jesus proclaimed unmistakably that God’s law is so perfect and absolute that no one can achieve righteousness. Yet God’s grace is so great that we do not have to.
Only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional.
God welcomes home anyone who will have him and, in fact, has made the first move already.
Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more… And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less… Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.
Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative.
A cease-fire between human beings depends upon a cease-fire with God.
Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.
We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.
Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don’t look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often.
Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.
the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.
Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.
Are we concentrating more on the kingdom of this world than on the kingdom that is not of this world?
God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.
I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.
In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how ‘pure’ you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.
Christian faith is… basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they’re foundational and they can transform individuals, families.
People who think they are free eventually end up slaves to their own desires, and those who give their freedom away to the only One you can trust with that freedom eventually get it back.