“The Suffering Servant invites us, in our pain, to wipe disingenuous smiles off our faces and start living honestly concerning how damaged and hurt we feel. He commands that we be righteously angry and that we hate what is evil, even as we cling to what is good.”- Scott Sauls “Let love be genuine. Abhor […]
“The joy of the Lord is amplified in the presence of lament. As my close friend and colleague Russ Ramsey once said in a sermon, lament is a necessary skill in the art of rejoicing. Lament is a skill, and rejoicing is an art form. I like how that sounds. Don’t you?”- Scott Sauls Scott […]
“God knows everything — even the worst, most humiliating, most devastating things about us. We are fully known by him and deeply loved in Christ. . . . He cannot love you more and will not love you less, and there is nothing you will ever be able to do to change that.”- Scott Sauls […]
“Denying the pain and sorrow that come with being alive is a form of hypocrisy. It is a choice we make to distance ourselves from the truth, or at least part of the truth, and live in a pretentious fairyland. When we do this, we cut ourselves off from what we were made for — […]
“When sin ceases to be wretched, grace ceases to be amazing. And when grace ceases to be amazing, things like grace, forgiveness, and then subsequent truth, beauty, holiness, and virtue cease to move us. When this happens, we become stuck in an insurmountable rut.”- Scott Sauls “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may […]
“Coming clean improves our relationship with God, the people we serve, and ourselves. Church basement honesty is much more empowering and fruitful than relying on false, wishful verdicts about ourselves as we nudge God out of the picture.”- Scott Sauls “In the beginning God created man in his own image, and man has been trying […]
“A broken hallelujah is still a hallelujah. In the ears of God, it is a sweet sound. Through Jesus, . . God . . . welcomes sinners and eats with them, even as he tends gently to their weary cries for mercy. And as he welcomes them, he also empowers them to participate in his […]
“Not only is it within [God’s] ability to awaken and restore us to our honored place, and not only is it within his ability to put a new song in your mouths, it is also within his very nature to do so. With resolve, he gets out of his seat and tends to us on […]
“Redeeming the voices that weary us requires that that volume be turned down on lies that suggest God resents us, he is ambivalent toward our sorrows, and he will not come through for us in the end. Turning the volume down on such lies requires turning the volume up on truths that put regret, fear, […]
“About the work of God’s fingers. . . . God made [the glory of creation] happen with mere fine motor skills. We use our fingers to make notes, brush hair out of our eyes, scratch an itch, floss teeth. But God? God uses his fingers to create, sustain, and govern square inches as well as […]
“There are practices that, when woven into the daily rhythms of life, can help us see God more clearly amid the beauty and terrors of life. Two such practices, abiding and beholding, are foundational to knowing God and experiencing his closeness, goodness, and glory.”- Scott Sauls In Prologue 5 (“Fine Motor Skills”) of Beautiful People […]
“The hard truth is that no person can love God until they see God and no person can see God until God gifts them with his Spirit. And yet the wonderful truth is that God does gift his Spirit liberally, opening the eyes of human hearts to see and savor not only the glory that […]