If you can’t see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you’ve never felt thunder and lightning you’ll be impressed with fireworks. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you’ll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.
In EVERY situation and EVERY circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.
What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.
My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes – many times – my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens – and it happens every day in some measure – I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.
One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.
Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.
One of the great enemies of hope is forgetting God’s promises.
Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.
Life is precarious, and life is precious. Don’t presume you will have it tomorrow, and don’t waste it today.
People don’t enjoy salt. They enjoy what is salted. We are the salt of the earth. We do not exist for ourselves.
Our deeds are not the basis of our salvation, they are the evidence of our salvation. They are not foundation, they are demonstration.
If you don’t know God as beautiful and satisfying, you don’t know him.
Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises
A Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible! A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stony heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.
Your mind was made to know and love God.
The more of God’s Word you know and love, the more of God’s Spirit you will experience.
Whenever your heart starts to be anxious about the future, preach to your heart and say, ‘Heart, who do you think you are to be afraid of the future and nullify the promise of God? No, heart, I will not exalt myself with anxiety. I will humble myself in peace and joy as I trust this precious and great promise of God – He cares for me.’
If God’s love for his children is to be measured by our health, wealth, and comfort in this life, God hated the apostle Paul.
Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.
The deepest longing of the human heart is to know and enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this.
Do not be more devoted to your own brain than you are to the Bible.
Prosperity cannot be a proof of God’s favor, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him. (Matt. 4:9)
But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.
Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy
We weren’t meant to be somebody–we were meant to know Somebody
