discipleship

If somebody in your life doesn't think you are a fanatic, you are probably backslidden.

When God does not answer His children according to the letter, He does so according to the spirit. If thou askest for coarse meal, wilt thou be angered because He gives thee the finest flour? If thou seekest bodily health, shouldst thou complain if instead thereof He makes thy sickness turn to the healing of spiritual maladies?

Even though Paul knew farewells were inevitable, he still formed deep relationships.

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him.

Having a big family is costly and invasive. As we realize how big our family is in Christ, how our family obligations transcend our artificial boundaries, there ought to be a weightiness to our response to our brothers and sisters in need.

Moses challenged parents both to teach the faith diligently and to maximize normal encounters or ongoing discussion.

I had rather mistrust my own capacity than God's justice.

Try to resist copying a blueprint from another person's ministry.

As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted.

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

The Inklings were comrades who have been touched by war, who view life through the lens of war, yet who look for hope and found it, in fellowship, where so many other modern writers and intellectuals saw only broken narratives, disfigurement, and despair.

Capital is necessary to the cultivation of esthetic value.

Salvation is a gift. Godliness is the pursuit.

The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And then, remarkably enough, even though he lives amongst a 'Christian people,' he incurs the same peril as he did when it was dangerous to openly confess Christ. And because of the follower's life, it will become evident who the admirers are, for the admirers will become agitated with him. Even these words will disturb many - but then they must likewise belong to the admirers.

(Bonhoeffer's) change was not an ungainly, embarrassing leap from which he would have to retreat slightly when he gained more maturity and perspective. It was by all accounts a deepening consistent with what had gone before.

When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation.Jesus said you are to love one another as I have loved you, a love that will possibly lead to the bloody, anguish gift of yourself, a love that forgives seven times seven, that keeps no record of wrong. This is the criterion, sole norm, the standard of discipleship in the New Israel of God.

The author offers Paul Tripp's analogy that most of the strategies for growth in the Christian life amounts to stapling live roses on a dead bush.

Struggle is a prerequisite to surrender.