Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make new deposits.

I do not consecrate myself to be a missionary or a preacher. I consecrate myself to God to do His will where I am, be it in school, office, or kitchen, or wherever He may, in His wisdom, send me.

It is not loving to impose our own grid onto others. We need to understand their situation and their needs accurately, and this comes from listening to them, not coming in with our own assumptions.

Jesus, Willard says, “does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.

We have to make these young people (of the Depression) feel that they are necessary. (They should be given) "certain things for which youth craves – the chance for self-sacrifice for an ideal.

Your child may be under more stress than you realize. Remember that situations around to past experiences. Just because you do not see something as a big deal does not mean it is not for your child.

Like the hub of a wheel, the church’s corporate life is an extension of the good news that God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

What God did for Jesus in standing up for Him, standing behind Him in life and in death, and in standing in communion and solidarity with Him, the Father also does for us, here and now, in our lives.

Many pastors would rather preach God's Word and keep their distance than invest in a personal one-on-one counseling ministry. Most pastors counsel because they have to, not because they want to.

The road that leads to heaven is risky, lonely, and costly in this world, and few are willing to pay the price. Following Jesus involves losing your life-and finding new life in him. Follow Me, pg. 11

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.

He's not a safe safe or a tame God, securely lodged behind the bars of a distant Heaven; He has the most annoying manner of showing up when we least want Him; of confronting us in the strangest ways.

The free man does what he likes in his working time and in his spare time what is required of him. The slave does what he is obliged to do in his working time and what he likes only when he is not at work.

They (Reagan and Kennedy) had some combination of cheerfulness and vulnerability that made them seem like boys on adventure who had become lost in needed a small kindness to get them back on the right path.

Any serious reading of the Bible means personal involvement in it, not symbol mental agreement with abstract propositions. And involvement is dangerous, because it leaves one open to unforeseen conclusions.