Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new.
Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships.
Your life is a gift and how you respond to it - what you do with it matters. That's where I start.
Everybody is following somebody. Everybody has faith in something and somebody. We are all believers.
The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.
The life that you want begins the moment you embrace the life you have because all of it is a miracle.
You're here, you're breathing, you are the recipient of an extraordinary act of generosity called life.
Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.
Swords appear strong, but they're actually quite weak. Jesus appears weak, but he's actually quite strong.
If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?
Before anything else, you have received breath - the gift of life itself. The first word about you is GIFT.
Sociologically, large groups of people don't generally have massive changes in their belief instantaneously.
Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).
Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.
The fundamental story arc of the Bible is God is passionate about rescuing this world, restoring it, renewing it.
I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it.
Many of the most significant moments in our lives come not because it all went right but because it all fell apart
Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don't think I'm doing anything terribly new.
Freedom is not having everything we crave, it's being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.
For a lot of people in our world today, God has become about believing the right stuff so you don't get in trouble.
I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know.
It is better to be fully present and rested and engaged for one thing than rushed, distracted, and scattered for ten.
I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.
People have a view of a God who is terrible that they can't even imagine being loving or wanting anything to do with.
If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
Many in the modern world fell for the myth that we're living in a static, fixed, flat reality of just material things.
The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true.
I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.
Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.
My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged.
Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.
The Bible tells a story. A story that isn’t over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.
When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.
I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.
The joy is in the creation. So I've never had a target audience, it's always been about being true to the work as it emerges.
opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams ... that is being naked.
My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.
Like a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment.
To me some of the greatest writing is when somebody puts something in words that you felt and experienced and you go, that's it.
Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian.
We all want to make a difference, to live in peace, to have joy each morning that we get to live this day and see what it brings.
If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God.
Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.
You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc.
Something is profoundly wrong and we are desperate for justice, for restoration and for somebody somewhere to do something about this.
What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like.
You can be living in a big house, driving a nice car, going on exotic vacations and still be empty inside, crippled with fear and dread.
A good sermon is going to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. It inspires you. It provokes you. It should make your soul soar.
When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage. So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are.
Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god, either.