Is anything too hard for the Lord? Has his word of promise ever failed? Then let us not entertain any unbelieving suspicions of his future care of us.

Christ has anointed us with his Spirit. He has set us apart for service to him and to one another. We represent to one another the address of God. We are priests who speak God’s Word and share Christ’s sacrifice.

“An essential part of our theological and missional task today is to tell [the narrative of the gospel] as clearly as possible, and to allow it to subvert other ways of telling the story of the world.” — N.T. Wright

Christian maturity comes when we learn to start responding to God out of love and responsibility and not merely desperation.

Why are we as a culture — ore even more peculiarly, the church — so obsessed with only portraying our “best side” to even those supposedly closest to us?

“Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us.”

The church must not only support and repair families but also find a way to become the family of God where everyone, married and single, childless or not, can flourish in love.

We must find peace and comfort in the reality that it is the Lord who causes good things to happen, not our efforts. Like Jesus said, ‘apart from him, we can do nothing.’ (cf. John 15:5)

Joy develops in the Christian way of discipleship by trusting and feeling good about what God has done — not what you have done!