We want to change the world by changing the way people think and then deploying them through organizational structures that set them loose in the world to accomplish great things. Leaders are the catalysts for making that happen.
If you don’t predetermine the conditions in which you’ll stop, you’ll quit pre-mature. According to Navy SEALS, most people stop at 40 percent of their actual capacity.
I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn’t enough. The diary was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.
...the Christian who understands the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit seeks God not primarily to gain reward or avoid punishment (since both are guaranteed in Christ anyway). Christians seek God for themselves. Without the gospel we may come and ask for things. Without the gospel, we may conceive of a holy God who is intimidating and who can be approached with petitions only if we are very good. Or we may conceive of a God whose "love" just means he regards everyone positively. To approach the first kind of 'God' is fearsome; to approach the second kind of God is no big deal. Thus without the gospel, there is no possibility of passioon and delight to praise and approach the true God.
You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.
It is important to know not only in general that the Bible is true but also that in the Bible God’s words are identical to his actions. When he says, “Let there be light,” there is light (Genesis 1:3). When God renames someone, it automatically remakes him (Genesis 17:5). The Bible does not say that God speaks and then proceeds to act, that he names and then proceeds to shape—but that God’s speaking and acting are the same thing. His word is his action, his divine power.
Anytime a church can throw other various events to create awareness in their community that they exist, that’s always a good thing. People begin to build an awareness of, “Okay, this church is in our city. They’re around. I’ve had interactions with them, and those interactions were positive.” When people get to those points in their lives where they’re like, “I need somewhere to run,” then they’re like, “Hey there’s that church over there.” So when [JGivens is] telling his story, he’s like, “I’m ready to run to God.” Part of running to God usually involves running to the local church. It’s not just, “I’m going to run out into the middle of nowhere and scream.” More than likely you’re going to run to a local church that has made itself known to you.CT, Pastoring Rappers
He is telling us that we will never be content unless, as we make our heartfelt request, we also acknowledge that our lives are in his hands, and that he is wiser than we are.
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Suffering almost almost always shows you that some things you thought you couldn't live without, you can live without if you lean on God.
So in our reading life, we ought not to oppose reading to life, or life to reading. In Christian circles, mark the person who continually shouts out, “Christianity is more than a doctrine, it’s a life!” More often than not, that’s the person who’s lost the plot. Reading is for life. And reading books, done right, is itself practice in reading all things. Practice with the nouns on the page prepares us for the nouns all around: all the persons, places, and things. We read persons: What do they mean by what they say and do? How do you interpret them correctly? How do you keep yourself from over-interpreting them or under-interpreting them? It’s difficult and dangerous, so we practice on dead people. Plato’s not insulted if you read him wrong; he’s in the Phaedrus (oddly, a book he wrote about how writing books was bad) waiting for you come back and get him right. Your roommate, on the other hand, is immediately offended to be read wrong, and says so.
The accusation of Satan was that Job did not actually love or serve God - he was loving and serving himself through compliance with God's will. And we have said that this is always partly true of even the best of God's followers. But it is because we do not fully love God just for his own sake that we are subject to such great ups and downs depending on how things go in our lives. We do not find our hearts fully satisfied with God unless other things are also going well, and therefore we are without sufficient roots, blown and beaten by the winds of changing circumstances. But to grow into a true "free lover" of God, who has the depth of joy unknown to the mercenary, conditional religious observer - we must ordinarily go through a stripping. We must feel that to obey God will bring us no benefits at all. It is at that point that seeking, praying to, and obeying God begin to change us.
But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.
The formal Christian is a man who knows enough about Christianity to spoil the world for him; but he does not know enough about it for it to be of any positive value.
Make your productivity systems streamlined, but don’t spend time over-optimizing. Act. You are free to do this because knowing what’s best does not depend on having your system all up to date; rather it depends on just stopping, reflecting, and asking, “What is the best thing to do now?”
Generosity without agenda is scandalous. It defies everything our culture stands for. But, too often, the church enforces greed instead of fighting it.It's time for the church to be known as the crazy people who are always giving things away. Let's show people that faith in Jesus is more about giving than receiving.
But the law can do only what the law can do. The law can only tell us what God requires and thereby explode our sin and misery, and when we find our righteousness in the gospel, the law can tell us what a life of gratitude looks like. The law has that important function to fulfill. But the law never becomes the gospel. The law is always an imperative, a command. The gospel is always an indicative, an announcement of a state of affairs, telling us what God has done. We should not look to the law — either God’s or a task list we have made up for ourselves — for our identity. I use the example of a sailboat. The law can tell us where we are and if we are in trouble. But only the gospel is the wind in our sails.
“The heart of most religions is good advice, good techniques, good programs, good ideas, and good support systems. . . . But the heart of Christianity is Good News. It comes not as a task for us to fulfill, a mission for us to accomplish, a game plan for us to follow with the help of life coaches, but as a report that someone else has already fulfilled, accomplished, followed, and achieved everything for us. Good advice may help us in daily direction; the Good News concerning Jesus Christ saves us from sin’s guilt and tyranny over our lives and the fear of death. It’s Good News because it does not depend on us. It is about God and his faithfulness to his own purposes and promises.”
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
