We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much longer.
Our ferocious commitment to our children’s safety and success, along with our genuine love, drives us to endure the often unhappy experience of disciplining our children.
Because children already have a realization of their weakness, is this not the best opportunity to apply the gospel to their hearts?
The engine that drives all your activities is hope. What you hope in shapes you.
You and I are stymied in our own creativity. We can only create as sub-creators, and even then our best work is only sub-creation.
There are few things more ungodly than fake joy when you should be mourning.
Sin is a fundamental failure to rejoice in what we should rejoice in.
If you look at Isis beheading women and children, if you are like me, you are not thinking, one of these would make a great missionary.
Whenever relationships can’t be restored, it’s because someone is not willing to move forward in the promises of God.
It’s so much more than a child’s story. – Matt Chandler on LIFE Today.
Why do lazy, minimum effort employees always seem to find places where they feel “underappreciated”?
When we heed God’s Word, we are rejecting how the world tries to disciple us.
A bad song you can’t forget is called an earworm. The way to get rid of an earworm is to deliberately remember an equally awful song.
Longing for something fresh, for something no one else has said often leads to bad exegesis.
The Church should spend less time trying to be “relevant”, which can come across as disingenuous, and more time trying to align their hearts to the authentic gospel message.
Privileged people can fall into the trap of universalizing experiences and laying them across other people’s experiences as an interpretive lens.
Often the question of, “Who am I?” should be answered with, “Whose am I?
Church is not meant to be fun. It’s meant to be formative.
Could it be that God is so intensely personal that He would burn down your world in hopes of building it back?
I am praying that the issues from the last 12 generations go into the ground with me so I have NEW issue is to pass on to my son.
Even though every identity marker I have can be taken from me, the grace and peace of the Trinity overflows into the life of the believer.
God’s people are the stage upon which His forgiveness becomes visible. They are never more authentic than when they ask for forgiveness and forgive others.
I’ve grown more OK with mystery as I’ve gotten older.
God doesn’t want meerly action but hearts driving action.
What has defined our faith since the beginning is open-ended gladness.
The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing.
Institutions and cultures are not immortal. Humans, Christian and non-Christian, are. Compared to us, our country is a gnat.
It is an EVIL thing to be an expert in the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters. We need to be experts in the strengths of our brothers and sisters.
As we gaze on Christ, the mind is informed, and the heart is inflamed, and the body begins to line up.
I think “HALLELUJAH” translates into “HALLELUJAH” in every language out there.
Adoration drives obedience, but throughout history people are prone to forget the faithfulness of God yesterday.
Augustine in City of God pictures a resurrection in which the bodily systems we no longer need to protect ourselves can use energy to praise God.
This wasn’t a legalistic play. He simply wanted more and more of God.
A sure way to have someone crushed by their doubt is to preach a sermon on how to remove your doubt.
The conviction that’s underneath a lot of other statements is, “I don’t trust Gjod.
God does not regret saving you. There is no sin which you commit which is beyond the cross of Christ.
Trying to figure out God is like trying to catch a fish in the Pacific Ocean with an inch of dental floss.
God is not just intensely personal. He is infinitely powerful.
When the early Church recited the Apostles Creed, it was simultaneously their greatest act of rebellion, and their greatest act of submission.
The speaker says one of the blessings of the family of God is that the enthusiasm of children influences their elders while experience seasons the younger members.
Christ distributes courage through community. He dissipates doubt through fellowship. Max Lucado
Expositing. John 14, the speaker explains that the Holy Spirit making His home with us involves Him exposing other areas of our lives for repentance, regeneration, and renewal.
To obey the commands of Scripture can finally become a delight when we see that the reasons almost always center around God’s love and provision for us in Christ.
We must help men and women see the epic in the ordinary details of life.
It is in my internal and external struggles, when it feels like someone is river-dancing on my last nerve, that the fruit of the Spirit is developed.
Worship shadows eternity and provides supernatural encouragement.
The pastor owns the opportunity to issue of the flock that it is OK not to be OK.
Moses challenged parents both to teach the faith diligently and to maximize normal encounters or ongoing discussion.
I was used to being the smartest guy in the room, and then God dropped me in a place that was well beyond me. It was painfully awesome.
I want every one of our members to grow into maturity more quickly than they seem to, but the Lord has taught me to shepherd people, call them to repentance and let Matthew 18:12–14 play out.
My understanding from the Word of God is that I am supposed to preach for the maturation of the believer with a view that lost people are there.
Jesus is the culmination of the greatness and the goodness of God.
It is arrogant to believe that you know what is true for you. Surely you know in your own life with you that you cannot be trusted.
The church is a whore, but she is still my mother. Augustine
The Word, the Gospel, creates not just people individually but A people collectively
One of the big lies with sin is that we are already waist-deep and might as well just plunge in.
Human beings are not primarily thinking creatures. We are creatures driven by our loves.
The Kingdom of God wasn’t born on the Fourth of July.
Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal darkness.