Mark Buchanan

But grace and effort are not opposites. Grace and earning are opposites.

One of the most convicting things I have recently come to realize about Jesus is that He was never, not once, in a hurry.

Prayer makes no sense apart from waiting.

Author wonders whether God's proclamation of His natural mastery when appearing to Job might be about restoring a sense of wonder to world-weary man as much as humbling him.

Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.

Many of us are confessional giants but ethical midgets.

Unless and until we rest in God, we will never risk for God.

This is the love of God, an alchemy that can turn enemies into children.

Laughter__ust good bone-shaking, belly-jiggling, light-in-the-head laughter, is a sure sign of health. The only one who hates it is Satan and all his wannabes.

We honestly think that we ourselves and those around us should be proficient with spiritual power, moving and acting with agility and endurance, wisdom and purity, able to conquer long-established habits of sloth and rebelliousness, simply on the basis of our desire and effort and sincerity...We have to train for the spiritual life.

God__ definition of going well is unique, distinct, almost eccentric. His definition of wellness is not about health, finances, or job security. It__ not about unfailing protection from the vagaries and dangers of a broken world. It__ not about life being fair. It__ about acceptance.

The Pharisees had an ethic of avoidance, and Jesus had an ethic of involvement.

For the place God calls us into isn__ doubt free__ow can any place where we walk by faith and not by sight be that? No, the holy wild is where we have driving and haunting doubts, God-hungry doubts that pull us to our knees, force us to the Word, make us wrestle all night and not let go until He blesses us. The holy wild throngs with true skeptics.

There is too wide a gap, for most of us, between what we say and what we mean. Between our words and our thoughts. The first thing the Prophet Isaiah said when he saw the living and exalted God was, __oe is me, I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips_ (Isaiah 6:5). Isaiah was one of the most godly men who ever walked the earth. But seeing God, he sees also, abrupt and stark and grief-making, his own duplicity. Then God does what only God can do: he sears his lips clean (Isaiah 6:6-7). And herein lies our hope: truly seeing God, we truly see ourselves, in all our woe-begotten duplicity; but crying out to God, we are truly and greatly helped.

Ironic that those most holy are least likely to see themselves that way.

Love can__ cover over the sins we cover up_If you want God and others to cover over your sin, stop covering it up.

Silence is the room we create for the searching of God, where we hear His voice and follow.