Edwards’s God was glorious, full of beauty, and seemingly uninterested in making people feel insecure. Edwards was a mystic, a man who didn’t simply write or preach about God, he experienced him.

The cross is a crisis point for all societies which seek to produce me in and women of quiescence, men and women who are trained to give unquestioning, uncritical obedience to worldly powers and not to Christ.

When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God's agenda, we are focusing on our own. God's agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not.

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.

It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.

We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than observance. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allowed to starve.

Of his first enemy encounter, Gen. Grant said that after his initial fear, "My heart resumed its place." Grant said he suddenly realized his potential enemy he had been "as much afraid of me as I had been of him.

Play to your strengths.”“I haven’t got any,” said Harry, before he could stop himself.“Excuse me,” growled Moody, “you’ve got strengths if I say you’ve got them.

The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history.

Jesus enters the garden, in preparation, intending to face his fears by facing his God, his Father, His greatest fear is to offend his Father, to disobey his own calling, its integrity, and the word of God on his life.

If you eat, breathe and grow, two things are happening—which have little to do with either air or burgers. You are receiving an education and your “spirit” is being formed. To be alive is to be formed.

Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St Luke or St Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Butler, but (contemporary writers), or even myself.

If the Gospel of Jesus is relational, that is, if our brokenness will be fixed not by our understanding of theology but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only Heaven knows.

The Roman Church has grown and grown, fueled by immigration but also renewed by two pontiffs who have seemed to understand what Tocqueville knew: People want guidance for their souls once they are convinced they have them.

The choice we face is not, as many imagine, between heaven and hell. Rather, the choice is between heaven and this world. Even a fool would exchange hell for heaven; but only the wise will exchange this world for heaven.