Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
While we were at rest, Christ was in rescue mode. While we were doing nothing, He was doing EVERYTHING. He was down in the depths of the earth fighting for our freedom.
The Word of God spoke into the dry bones. His breath filled them, put tendons (repair), and put skin on...Then you will know I am God...When Jesus comes that will happen.
When you strip all of this down it's just about a God in Heaven who loves you very much. And created in you a heart for Him...Your heart was fashioned by Jesus and for Jesus.
If only everyone could know we’ve been created by and for God! If only we could all comprehend that we’re precious to Him, housing mirrored souls designed to reflect His glory.
As an overflow of my life - the wake I leave behind with my little dash on earth - I want others to fall in love with Jesus and know of His great hope and purpose for their lives.
God spoke to me.” Don't let the voice of the darkness, tell you that you are not worth that God would not speak to you. Don't let him tell you, you don't matter. God spoke to you.
If there's a perfect family out there, we're all happy for that family. But most families aren't perfect. Most families are living with some sort of challenge or some sort of difficulty.
This is the residue of sin on planet earth. Things are broken. People are hurting. The night is here. Darkness is upon us. Yet shining in the night is a Savior, and He has come to shine on you.
But to mean it when I say that I want my life to count for His glory is to drive a stake through the heart of self - a painful and determined dying to me that must be a part of every day I live.
God has plans and purposes for each of our lives. But the beauty is that He doesn't call us and leave us on our own. Jesus actually lives in us to pull off the amazing things that He has invited us into.
Advent allows us to recover during this four-week journey. It begins four Sundays before Christmas all the way up to Christmas. It lets us breath in those moments of faithfulness and helps us recognize that God is working.
Whether it's an attorney or a bond trader or a journalist, or a musician or pastor, you want to do your best. You don't want to seek acclaim. You don't want to seek awards. You want to seek to do your best at what God's given you.
The world has been tragic since the day Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. From that moment murder, mayhem and war entered the scene and we are still suffering the consequences of a man-driven, self-serving, short-sighted environment.
At the heart of it all, Passion exists to see a generation stake their lives on what matters most. For us, that's the fame of the One who rescues and restores, and the privilege we have to fully leverage our lives by amplifying His name in everything we do.
The two great moments in human history are the day that Christ was born and the day He was raised from the dead. These are represented by Christmas and Easter - the two biggest holidays for the church. People who don't even go to church do go on these days.
There's something that's not right or not perfect or not the way we had hoped or dreamed that it was going to be. But God promises that He will use everything and every moment to ultimately take us to a new Heaven and a new Earth. For now, we're stuck in the middle.
There is a ripple effect to the gospel that’s inevitable. There’s a ripple effect to true grace. It doesn’t lead us to only sit and contemplate what hap- pened to us. It leads us to proclaim what’s happened to us—and what can happen to anybody and everybody on the planet.
Some of us attend the church on the corner, professing to worship the living God above all. Others, who rarely darken the church doors, would say worship isn't a part of their lives because they aren't "religious." But everybody has an altar. And every altar has a throne.
As long as I can remember, the compelling force behind my calling is a desire to know Jesus more and to make Him known. I believe I was created for a relationship with Jesus, so growing in my relationship with Him and worshiping Him with all my heart and life is preeminent.
It’s easy: You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance. At the end of that trail you’ll find a throne; and whatever, or whoever, is on that throne is what’s of highest value to you. On that throne is what you worship.
People say all the time 'I don't have a good testimony' because they think their story has to involve some dramatic story of change from 'bad' to 'good'. But Jesus didn't come to save people this way. Sin doesn't make us bad it makes us dead. Jesus came to save by bringing the dead to life. And that's an amazing testimony.
It’s at the heart of everything we struggle with in life: longing to be valuable, to be accepted, to be prized, to be worth something to somebody, to have a life that matters, and God’s saying ‘You matter! I didn’t make anyone else like you. You’re not a reprint or a lithograph. You’re a one-of-a-kind, original creation of God.
We go from Malachi to Matthew in one page of our scriptures, but that one piece of paper that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament represents 400 years of history - 400 years where there wasn't a prophet, 400 years where God's voice wasn't heard. And that silence was broken with the cry of a baby on Christmas night.
Life isn't perfect and that's the kind of world where Jesus showed up. He wasn't born in a palace on a perfect day. He was born in the middle of the night during tax season to an unwed couple in a stable or a cave in a sheep field. That was God's way of showing us that nothing is perfect. Life is chaotic. It's messy. That's what Jesus was stepping into.
Worship is simply about value. The simplest definition I can give is this: Worship is our response to what we value most. That’s why worship is that thing we all do. It’s what we’re all about on any given day……….the trail never lies. We may say we value this thing or that thing more than any other, but the volume of our actions speaks louder than our words.
Each time I stop somewhere and look out, there are more people sitting there than there were the time I came before. I think that's just a reflection of the fact that what God's doing is really touching the hearts of people and making a difference in their lives. That's kind of the best things you can do to promote anything, I think, is to really just have God present.
You only have one life. And you only have one life of worship. You have one brief opportunity in time to declare your allegiance, to unleash your affection, to exhault something or someone above all else. So don't waste your worship on some little god, squandering your birthright on idols made only with human imagination. Guard your worship. And carefully evaluate all potential takers.
The good thing about life is that you can research anywhere you are. I'm just constantly gathering little bits of information all the time. I'm always grabbing something out of the headlines, out of the news or reading a book about astronomy and just trying to figure out how to get my head around the facts but the bigger stress is trying to connect those facts to normal life situations and our relationship with God.
How many of you heard the voice of God speak specifically, clearly, directly, and personally, to you? Can you just put a hand up? I'd like you to share it. Can you put a hand up for a minute? Just want you to look around; that's people saying, "God Almighty, the Maker of heaven, the one Who's sitting on the only throne that's not under threat - He spoke to me. He spoke to me." "God spoke to me." Don't let the voice of the darkness tell you that you are not worth that God would not speak to you. Don't let him tell you, you don't matter. God spoke to you.