glory-of-god

When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God's agenda, we are focusing on our own. God's agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not.

God is the greatest thing that exists, ever has existed or ever will_for us to glory in anything else, would be sin, as there is nothing greater than God, there is no calling greater than praising God.

Think of (the Kingdom) like the sun. As it peeks through on a cloudy day, we do not say the sun has grown. We say, 'The sun has broken through.' Our view of the sun has changed, or obstacles to the sun have been removed, but we have not changed the sun.

Wasting time is living in self glorification instead of glorifying God as God is time

If we take reason strictly, the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellence no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors or to the power of seeing to perceive the sweetness of food.

Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise

We must remember that all stations are as much about life as they are obviously about death. All is redeemed. All is grist for transformation and glory.

Underestimation has its uses.

Life produces a different taste each time you take it.

Humility is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God.

Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all.

He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.

We tend to believe that God's commands are given to us merely for our own sake. But this is not true. As those created in the image of God, our very nature as image bearers explains the reasons behind God's commands.

The Apostle __aul__ antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. . . .everything that exists__ncluding evil__s ordained by a holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. We don__ make God. He makes us. We don__ decide what he is going to be like. He decides what he is going to be like. He decides what we are going to be like. He created the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools. . . . our eternal joy and strength and holiness depend on the solidity of this worldview putting strong fiber into the spine of our faith. Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won__ survive the days ahead.

If all people were to be judged by 'right and wrong', nobody would be wholly right or wholly wrong - for have not all people 'sinned and fallen from the glory of God'? It seems more than a little unfair that some folks with at least as much 'sin' themselves as any gay or trans person, like to jump up and down and point fingers at other people.

Our hearts are wired for worship, and our worship is directly tied to our sense of hope.

We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control both of our own lives and the government we live under. God has used China's government for His own purposes, molding and shaping His children as He sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God.

We praise God, not because he needs our praise (for all glory resides in and on him), but in order to see him more clearly, enlarge our soul, and relieve our spirit.