If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

If we knew how much God loved us and was for us, we’d talk to Him all day long.

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me

People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

That means 19 or 20 of the books of the NT (New Testament) are anonymous. Many are blatantly pseudepigraphic (forgeries, see next section), with famous names applied to artificially promote veracity.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

A public office is not a job, it is an opportunity to do something for the public.

The common workshop goal is revision, not suicide.

Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short, to the spirits everything speaks.

I'm tired of giving my best and not having it be good enough.

That's my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.

History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.

Success in anything important rarely comes without the Five Horsemen of Success: planning, effort, positivity, perseverance and resilience.

When you lose your mother at 20 and then your father soon after, melancholia is part of your life.