If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially the people nobody else notices.

When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.

Every day you and I walk through God's shop. Every day we brush up against objects of incalculable worth to Him. People. Every one of them carries a price tag, if only we could see it.

If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.

So it goes for those of us who live in a cul-de-sac, where babies are brought home from the hospital and watched over, where hearts stop and feet slip, where we wonder if there is a hidden road that leads somewhere.We believe and we doubt. Believing and doubting share the same inevitability, but they are not equal. They cannot lay the same claim on our allegiance. They do not share the same power.If there are places beyond the cul-de-sac, doubt cannot take us there.

David is called a man after God's heart. This can be a little confusing when you get into his story, because he's guilty of adultery and murder and cover-up. He's a train wreck as a husband, and he's worse as a dad. But his heart belongs to God. His whole life is immersed in the presence and story of God. What lights him up is to serve God and love God, and when he mess up—and he does—he repents and wants to get right with God again.

Even you can’t tell yourself how to change, because you didn’t create you. To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God. He has no other agenda. He has no unmet needs he is hoping you can help him with. And he knows what the best version of you looks like. He delighted in the idea of it, and he is already working on it. The apostle Paul said, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Which means God is at work every moment to help you become his best version of you.

The ministry of bearing with one another is more than simply tolerating difficult people. It is also learning to hear God speak through them.

God says, 'I will measure my people by the one standard that counts. It’s very simple. Are people hungry? Feed them. Are people sick? Help them. Are people oppressed? Stick up for them. Are the widows lonely? Visit them. Are there uneducated children? Teach them. Are people rejected because of the color of their skin? Befriend them.'The widow of Zarephath fed Elijah even though she had but a handful of flour and a little oil in a jug. (1 Kings 17:7–24) In this story she is recklessly generous. She gives the last of what she has to Elijah.We should all pause occasionally to ask if we are living with that kind of generous spirit. Maybe we have an abundance of oil and flour in our jars. Maybe we only have a little. Maybe we have a huge flour jar, or perhaps a very small one. No matter what we have, we can still learn to live with a generous spirit.

We may be unlovely yet we are not unloved.

True joy, as it turns out, comes only to those who have devoted their lives to something greater than personal happiness.

As long as we have unsolved problems, unfulfilled desires, and a mustard seed of faith, we have all we need for a vibrant prayer life.

Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.

If I think God’s aim is to produce rule-followers, spiritual growth will always be an obligation rather than a desire of my heart.

We complicate our faith and lives in many ways, but at the core, our purpose is simple: We are called to love.

Christianity is like a nail," he (Yemelian Yaroslavsky). "The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.

The greatest bloodbaths in the history of the human race were recorded in the twentieth century in countries that sought to eliminate God, worship, and faith.

...sin is often the attempt to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way.

...all of us are somewhere on a journey to God, and the gap between least and most advanced is infinitely smaller than the gap between the most advanced and God himself.

Humility is the freedom to stop trying to be what we're not, or pretending to be what we're not, and accepting our 'appropriate smallness.

Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.

God is never a God of discouragement. When you have a discouraging spirit or train of thought in your mind, you can be sure it is not from God. He sometimes brings pain to his children-conviction over sin, or repentance over fallenness, or challenges that scare us, or visions of his holiness that overwhelm us. But God never brings discouragement.

No heart is as whole as a broken heart, and no faith is as solid as a wounded faith." Elie Wiesel

Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.

A deep soul lives in conscious awareness of eternity, not simply today.

Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.

We must minister out of weakness. The reason we help others is not because we are strong and they need us; it is because if we don't help them, we will end up a hopeless relic.

The greatest moment of your life is now. Not because it's pleasant or happy or easy, but because this moment is the only moment you've got. Every past moment is irretrievably gone. It's never coming back. If you live there, you lose your life. And the future is always out there somewhere. You can spend an eternity waiting for tomorrow, or worrying about tomorrow. If you live there, you likewise will lose your life. This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you.

We are not the passive victim of others' opinions. Their opinions are powerless until we validate them.