All in Favorite Quotes

What is Grace?

The definition I give for grace in my book One-Way Love comes from Paul Zahl: Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…. The cliché definition of grace is “unconditional love.”…

When God Breaks You

In my devotional, It is Finished: 365 Days of Good News, we share this amazing testimony from my friend Mike Adams. Mike is a former pastor and co-host/producer of The Grace Cafe Podcast with his wife, Susan. I had made theology my pursuit, my goal, my aim, my identity. And I was pretty good at it too…

I Want a New Drug

Preachers these days are expected to major in “moral renovation.” They are expected to provide a practical “to-do” list, rather than simply announce, “It is finished!” They are expected to do something other than—more than—lift up before their congregation Christ's finished work, preaching a full absolution solely on the basis…

One Way We Avoid Ourselves

One effective way to avoid our own dark shadows is to hide behind the bright and obvious faults of someone else. The following transparent and honest illustration from Dan Allender in his article, Loving Our Enemies: A Look at Why We Wrongly Love Our Enemies (1995), reveals the ways and reasons we unite with one another…

The Forgiveness Business

The church is not in the world to teach sinners how to straighten up and fly right. That’s the world’s business; and on the whole it does a fairly competent—even gleefully aggressive—job of it. The church is supposed to be in the forgiveness business. Its job in filling pulpits is to find derelict nobodies…

Bad News for Bookkeepers

Here’s a quote that both stings and sings from the brilliant mind and poetic pen of the late Robert Farrar Capon. It stings because it confronts our natural instinct to keep score. It sings because it reminds us that God has forever settled the score against us…