“Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside of you, not outside of you.”1
“I no longer need to carry the burden of the past on my shoulders, so I am free to fully give myself to what God has called me to in the here and now.”
“If I am going to see myself clearly, I need you to hold the mirror of God’s Word in front of me.”
“Belief in eternity can clarify your values and renew your hope.”
“The Psalms welcome us to a faith where God’s agenda is more important than ours and where we are asked to live out our faith in the context of a disastrously broken world. But this is also precisely where we experience the highest personal joys, as we put our hope in the covenant love of the Lord and make the pursuit of his glory the goal of our lives.”
“Personal ministry is not about always knowing what to say. It is not about fixing everything in sight that is broken. Personal ministry is about connecting people with Christ so that they are able to think as he would have them think, desire what he says is best, and do what he calls them to do even if their circumstances never get “fixed.” It involves exposing hurt, lost, and confused people to God’s glory, so that they give up their pursuit of their own glory and live for his.”
“Only love for Christ has the power to incapacitate the sturdy love for self that is the bane of every sinner, and only the grace of Christ has the power to produce that love.”
“Don’t fear your weaknesses—God supplies all the strength you need. Be afraid of those moments when you think you’re independently strong.”
“The Bible says that our core problem, the fundamental reason we do what we do, is sin.”
“You obey not to get God’s attention, but because you have been the object of his attention since before the world began.”
“Weakness is not the problem, but my delusion of my strengths is.”
“None of us gets our dream in the way that we dreamt it, because none of us is writing our own story. God, in his love, writes a better story than we could ever write for ourselves. He has a better dream than the one we conceive. He knows much better than we do what is best for us. He will take us places that we never intended to go because, in doing so, we become more of what he re-created us in Christ to be.”
“The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation.”
“Grace doesn’t run away from sinners; it runs toward them, offering extravagant hope and help.”
“God’s love is not just meant to be enjoyed privately; it is meant to be expressed and shared with others.”
“The gospel is not just good news for the future; it is good news for today, in the midst of our brokenness and struggles.”
“True freedom is found in surrendering our own will and desires to God’s perfect plan for our lives.”
“Our greatest need is not to be successful or accomplished; our greatest need is to be rescued and redeemed by God’s grace.”
“Humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is thinking of ourselves less and thinking of God and others more.”
“God’s design in our pain enables us to look back and say: He loves me enough to take me where I would have never wanted to go in order to produce in me what I never could have achieved on my own.”
“If you don’t keep the eyes of your heart focused on the paradise that is to come, you will try to turn this poor fallen world into the paradise it will never be.”
“Grace will expose the deepest issues of your heart, then point you to the Cross which covers everything that’s been exposed.”
“You can tell yourself that God’s not fair, or you can thank Him that He’s not fair. If God was fair, we would be doomed and condemned.”
“All creation is meant to be a finger pointing us to ultimate glory, the only glory that can ever satisfy the human heart, the glory of God.”
“Sin is a moral problem. It is about my rebellion against God and my quest to have for myself the glory that is due Him. Sin is not first about the breaking of an abstract set of rules. Sin is first and foremost about breaking relationship with God, and because I have broken this relationship, it is then easy and natural to rebel against God’s rules.”
“We must remember that our suffering is not in the way of God’s plan, but part of it. In our suffering, God is not only with us but also is employing it to change us and those to whom we minister.”
1 All of these quotes are from the following websites: