Francis Chan

God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love.

Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?

The irony is that while God doesn't need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don't really want Him most of the time. He treasures us and anticipates our departure from this earth to be with Him-and we wonder, indifferently, how much we have to do for Him to get by.

_"Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?

The irony is that while God doesn__ need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don__ really want Him most of the time.

But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.

Jesus didn't speak of hell so that we could study, debate and write books about it. He gave us these passages so that we would live holy lives. Jesus evidently hates it when we tear into our brothers or sisters with demeaning words, words that fail to honor the people around us as the beautiful image-bearing creatures that they are.

The verses in the Bible are more than good teachings, they possess power.

God is the only being who is good, and the standards are set by Him. Because God hates sin, He has to punish those guilty of sin. Maybe that's not an appealing standard. But to put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards.

More than any other attribute of Jesus, his humility is the key to a healthy marriage. If two people make it their goal to imitate the humility of Christ, everything else will take care of itself.

Arguments escalate when we want to be right more than we want to be CHRIST. It's easy to get blinded in the heat of disagreement. Soon, all we want is to win. Even if victory requires sin. The one who wins the argument is usually the one who acts LESS like Christ.

If you__ rather watch your kids grow up than see the face of your Savior today, you don__ grasp the beauty of God. If you worry about what would happen to your children if you were gone, you don__ understand the providence of God.

The one who wins the argument is usually the one who acts less like Christ.

And your own heart generates enough pressure as it pumps blood throughout your body that it could squirt blood up to 30 feet. (I__e never tried this, and I don__ recommend it.)

God exists outside of time, and since we are within time, there is no way we will ever totally grasp that concept.

You must determine your goal. What matters most? Winning arguments? Or resembling Christ? Even in the heat of an argument we should be asking ourselves if we are acting like Christ.

Frederick Buechner writes, __ntellectually we all know that we will die but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as thought it were true. On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever.

We will always find ourselves in trouble when we get comfortable with things as they are.