“But here’s the question we must ask if we seek a secure attachment with God. Has this concept of Emmanuel become so overfamiliar that it has become lodged in our logical left brain and is never given the capacity to form the basis of our security in the world? . . . Have we kept […]
“When you surround yourself with people you admire, who live in a way that inspires you, they start to rub off on you. I call it ‘bumping into someone’s anointing.’ It’s not something that can simply be taught. It has to be caught.”- Mark Batterson (emphasis author’s) “It is amazing what you can accomplish if […]
“The God who would do everything to have relationship with us . . . chose to put on skin in the person of Jesus. He swapped His righteousness for our wrongness, His access for our distance, an open door for relationship with the Father. He is our common ground.”- Dick Foth In Chapter 3 (“The […]
“We imagine God’s idea of abundance to be an exaggerated version of ours, like an upgraded hotel room or a surprise free drink at our favorite coffee shop. And while He sometimes does those very things, His way often confounds.”- Sara Hagerty “You have loved us first, O God. . . . if I rise […]
“There are also all sorts of things in our own spiritual life, where a thing has to be killed, and broken, in order that it may then become bright and strong and beautiful.”- C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines […]
“Our limitations are often invisible but unyielding fences in our lives until we are forced to notice them. . . . the wire fence — the limitations you’ve been resenting or working fiercely to overcome, often subconsciously.”- Sara Hagerty “Fixed layers, consequences unfolding by casual necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within […]
“The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. . . . Nothing that you have not given away will really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the […]
“Augustine . . . observed that the heart’s loves have an order to them, and that we often love less important things more and the more important things less. . . . The ultimate disordered love, however — and the ultimate source of our discontent — is failure to love the first thing first, the […]
“Most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. . . . […]
“Traditional belief in God was the basis for discovered, objective meaning — meaning that is there, apart from your inner feelings or interpretations. If we were made by God for certain purposes, then there are inherent meanings we must accept. The meanings that secular people have are not discovered but rather created. They are no […]
“We continue to expect Garden of Eden faith in a Garden of Gethsemane age. And without a framework for processing disillusionment, we treat our add-on assumptions as proof of what we know. . . . Such reasoning gives more power to the add-on than the truth. We wind up keeping the illusion (I know how […]
“Whatever you have is only by God’s gift and appointment (1 Chronicles 29:12-14). So to not share with those who have less, to fail to meet their basic human needs . . . is being not simply unmerciful but unjust.”- Timothy Keller “But who am I {King David], and who are my people, that we […]