“When we get angry, we should ask: ‘What am I defending?’ If we do that, we will see how often we are defending our ego, pride, agendas, and image. God’s anger is always righteous because He is perfect love. So his anger is always in defense of the good, true, and beautiful, and his anger […]
“Having friends means we never have to walk this weary planet alone. And the treasure of friendship is an inheritance God has provided for all of us. But many of us are living lives bereft of deep friendship. . . . One of the greatest gifts the church can give to the world is her […]
“Don’t hold on to the miracle; hold on to the miracle worker.”- Sheila Walsh “Then Jesus shouted, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ And the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them, ‘Unwrap him and let him go!’ Many of the people who were with […]
“Good things, if received without faith in God, will enslave, disappoint, or turn out to be a snare in some way. As David Foster Wallace has said, if you worship something besides a real God, ‘it will eat you alive!’ . . . if we love anything more than God, we go against our own […]
“When you hurt, God hurts. Regardless of what He may be in the process of accomplishing, regardless of how noble His purposes may be, He is in touch with what you are feeling.”- Dr. Charles F. Stanley “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was […]
“[Lazarus’ sisters] appealed to the love of Jesus and stated their problem. They did not tell him how to respond. No presumption. No overarching or underreacting. They simply wrapped their concerns in a sentence and left it with Jesus. A lesson for us all perhaps?”- Max Lucado “A man named Lazarus was sick. He lived […]
“Most of us were not taught how to recognize pain, name it, and be with it. But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.”- Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness “My heart pounds in […]
“Admonishment is high-octane encouragement. The word literally means ‘putting in mind.’ To admonish is to deposit truth into a person’s thoughts. Above all, admonishment is truth spoken into a difficult circumstance. It inserts the chlorine tablet of veracity into the algae of difficulty.”- Max Lucado “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching […]
“If you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”- John 11:21-22 In Chapter 22 (“The Grave Robber”) of his book The Grave Robber, Mark Batterson begins his discussion of Jesus’ seventh miracle recorded in the gospel of John- Jesus raises […]