My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges.
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The meaning of life. The wasted years of life. The poor choices of life. God answers the mess of life with one word: 'grace.'
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Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own.
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My book centers in on the New Testament, the goal being to help a person who wants to understand the Bible to see how what God did as revealed in the New Testament will reveal to them their own personal story.
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I don't believe our works save us, but I believe they follow us into heaven and bring glory to God.
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People assume when they come into a church and see a person up there speaking, 'That person must be a good person.' My challenge through the years has been believing that: 'I guess I must be a really good person.' I struggle with it. It just helps me to keep that confessional posture.
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For years I thought my assignment or the Church's assignment was to articulate the Gospel and nothing more. Now I believe that if we don't support the verbal expression of the Gospel with physical demonstration of compassion, we are not imitating Jesus.
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Become a worry-slapper. Treat frets like mosquitoes. Do you procrastinate when a bloodsucking bug lights on your skin? 'I'll take care of it in a moment.' Of course you don't! You give the critter the slap it deserves. Be equally decisive with anxiety.
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God's glory is the big news of the Bible, and my desire is that it would be all about me, but really it's all about God's glory.