What catches my eye

God gives a promise to a person like you or me to fulfill the purpose for which they were born. He lays out a plan (although He's often very slow or sketchy concerning the details) to possess it and takes them through a process to ultimately prosper by inheriting the promise.

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.

Faith is precisely trusting that you who give gratuitously will receive gratuitously, but not necessarily from the person to whom you gave. The danger is in pouring yourself out to others in the hope that they will fully receive you. You will soon feel as if others are walking away with parts of you. You cannot give yourself to others if you do not own yourself, and you can only truly own yourself when you have been fully received in unconditional love.

Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.

Whatever you fear, you worship.

I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out - plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

When you get exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, or run down, your body is saying that you are doing things that are none of your business. God does not require of you what is beyond your ability, what leads you away from God, or what makes you depressed or sad. God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well. Doing so might include suffering, fatigue, and even moments of great physical or emotional pain, but none of this must ever pull you away from your deepest self and God.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, they run and don't get tired, they walk and don't lag behind.

Jesus didn't hand down blanket money rules; He targeted each person's idol - greed, lust, or a slavery mindset - to free them to walk the Way.

“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

Christ created a Way; the Roman Catholics turned it into an empire; and the Americans turned it into corporations

And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don't even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words. God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings, yet he also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, his holy ones, in perfect harmony with God's plan and our destiny.

Modern warfare is isometric with spiritual warfare.

Phone addiction masks unpleasant emotion. When you get that feeling like you need to stare at the phone, ask your body what it wants to do. Does it want to cry, shake, moan, dance, etc? If you let it express emotion, you get some control back. This looks weird; close the door.

But I'll take the hand of those who don't know the way, who can't see where they're going. I'll be a personal guide to them, directing them through unknown country. I'll be right there to show them what roads to take, make sure they don't fall into the ditch. These are the things I'll be doing for them - sticking with them, not leaving them for a minute.

Walk your path of faith with both heart and mind. You will walk it fruitfully when you synthesize both.

Don't panic. I'm with you. There's no need to fear for I'm your God. I'll give you strength. I'll help you. I'll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you.

The price of cynical protection is self-deception. The cynic abandons the human burden of deciding what is true and what is not; he does this by refusing to believe in anything. His optimism is lost because he lacks the skill to turn optimism into hope; his refuge is a state in which he deludes himself into thinking that neither hope nor truth is necessary. He comes to believe that the moral life can be lived on negative premises.

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

Don't hate the person. Hate the culture that flows through them.

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he's the one who will keep you on track.

Muslims are called to pray all the time; Christians are called to forgive all the time.

“Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

If you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it's not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn't because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea's time has come.

Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.

If I'm not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince.

So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

This relentless cult of novelty, with its assertion that art need not be good or pure, just so long as it is new, newer, and newer still, conceals an unyielding and long-sustained attempt to undermine, ridicule and uproot all moral precepts. There is no God, there is no truth, the universe is chaotic, all is relative, the world as text, a text any post-modernist is willing to compose. How clamorous it all is, but also how helpless.

For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

When man listens, God speaks. When man obeys, God acts.

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things

The reward for great work is more work, and I find that saying that maxim to the right person, the kind of person I want to spend time with, their eyes go wide and they understand it immediately. That the reward for great work is not money, power, fame. It is the privilege to get to do more of this thing that I love doing.

The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see.

The best work is the work that feels like play. If it feels like work, something is wrong.

And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

"it takes hard work to achieve anything great" is a dangerous lie. great output comes from finding an activity that feels as natural as breathing or walking and great work becomes the very substance of your existence. if it feels like a grind you've found the wrong expression

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb. I thank you, High God - you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration - what a creation!

I would love to be paid purely for my judgment, not for any work. I want a robot, capital, or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgment.

He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

You have to let your father and father figures go. You must stop seeing yourself through their eyes and trying to make them proud of you. For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.

Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you are not. It makes no sense to say you're not good enough to practice. It's like saying you're too sick to go to the doctor.

Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you're serving is Christ.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

The real danger isn't superintelligent machines, but that humans accept a degraded definition of intelligence. We're forgetting what it's like to struggle with a genuinely hard problem, to experience real understanding.

God doesn't want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.

Do you think God competes for your attention [when you're doomscrolling]?

“When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force - no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.”

'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver; 'don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

Haven't I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don't be timid; don't get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take.

Acquire the Spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.

My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.

It's what we trust in but don't yet see that keeps us going.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.

You fast, but Satan does not eat. You labor fervently, but Satan never sleeps. The only dimension with which you can outperform Satan is by acquiring humility, for Satan has no humility.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

The harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few.