Dinner is a cacophonous exercise of holy sanctification.

New freedoms surface old habits. I haven't left sin behind, only discovered a new medium for my treachery. My real trouble as a writer isn't trying to mean the words that I write. It's living into the words that I mean. Nonfiction writing can feel like the high art of hypocrisy.

Desire, if it is to be trusted, is to be inspired by a holy vocabulary.

The phrases of the Lord's Prayer, "are words we pray, not always because we believe them, but because we WANT to believe them.

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us.

We prefer the not wanting and not having to the losing.

Grace has as much to say about endings as it does about beginnings.

Only he who cries out for the persecuted Jews can sing Gregorian chants. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How do you fill the space between, "God says it," and, "I believe it,"?

The Christian story, centered as it is on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the only story for making sense of desire and loss.

The Bible provocatively evokes desire.

Blessing and obedience do comfortably and mysteriously coexist.

Holy desire can be learned. All prayer is part work and part rest.

Kingdom is a signpost to the holy.

Our small group is committed to getting the biblical text under our skin.

After her initial conversion as a teenager, the author writes, "I was sent back into a world that no longer looked familiar to me. I had to relearn how to do everything.

I didn't know how faith felt when it grew incrementally.

God is the I AM that I AM not the I AM that we wish.

Struggle is a prerequisite to surrender.

According to Aquinas, effort may not be the best measure of our virtue.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, and words – can cut your insides.

His childhood passed in quiet anxiety.

Believing in the sovereignty of God injects courage in the act of desire.

We all have a tendency to use prayer to dictate to God.