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" Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences. "

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" Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques - but no one actually wants to become like them. "

" In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison. "

" Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel. "

" Authority can be faked. That's why impersonating a police officer is a crime. Sometimes the outward appearances of authority can be deceiving. "

" People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible. "

" The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest. "

" Opposition is an inevitable reality of pastoral life. "

" Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects. "

" As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness. "

" Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings. "

" This much I have learned: human beings come with very different sets of wiring, different interests, different temperaments, different learning styles, different gifts, different temptations. These differences are tremendously important in the spiritual formation of human beings. "

" Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly. "

" Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus. "

" Better to be a loving person without knowing how you got there, than an expert no one can stand to be around. "

" I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. "

" The toppling of idols - even respectable, admired, best-practice, fastest-growing idols - is always the road to liberation. "

" Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto. "

" Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end. "

" Sin is very important to the soul because sin is what disintegrates the soul; it's what attacks the soul. Sin kind of is to the soul what cancer is to the body. "

" Spiritual formation is for everyone. Just as there is an 'outer you' that is being formed and shaped all the time, like it or not, by accident or on purpose, so there is an 'inner you.' You have a spirit. And it's constantly being shaped and tugged at: by what you hear and watch and say and read and think and experience. "

" Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me. "

" I know that those of us who go into church work are to regard ourselves as servants, are to offer our lives as a gift. "

" There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text. "

" Tithing is considerably less popular than words like generosity or sharing. "

" Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It's mere diversion. "

" No one wants pain. Not even long-time, mature Christians who want to grow. We will always find ways to avoid pain. Pain itself is a bad thing. "

" In community, we discover who we really are and how much transformation we still require. This is why I am irrevocably committed to small groups. Through them, we can accomplish our God-entrusted work to transform human beings. "

" We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol. "

" When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part. "

" When preaching is done right, it can change lives. When it's done badly, my failure goes beyond the merely human. "