“Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.”

“Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God's laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration.”

“Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.”

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”

“Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.”

“If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”

“Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.”