Cheerfully in Christ

Joseph running from Potiphar’s wife has always been painted to me as an incredibly heroic act not just against sin, but from a sinful woman.  I almost forget Joseph had spent his life in exile, in pain, with no opportunity to be with women.  I can almost forget how tempting Potiphar’s wife would have been to him.  Would she not have seemed like a consolation in the moment?  When stopping to think about that level of temptation, it is heroic in a new sense to me.

“Answering a student’s question, ‘Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?’ thus, It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.”

“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.”

“I am perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are they are not legends. Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has based any doctrine on it. And the act of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art.”

“We all want peace. It is desired above all by those who suffer its absence. We can speak with splendid words, but if there is no peace in our heart, there will be no peace in the world. With zero violence and 100 percent tenderness, let us build the evangelical peace that excludes no one. Let us pray together that the language of love and dialogue may always prevail over the language of conflict.”

“Rest is not a lack of action– it is a presence of an attitude. Rest is an inner reality that comes from a deep conviction that God is with us. When we are convinced that ‘it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,’ we lose the pressure in life to rely on our own strength and efforts. Instead we find freedom to rely on His effort in and through us.”

“Being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.” - Fannie Flagg (via quotemadness)

“People ask me, ‘Why pray if God is sovereign?’ I respond, ‘Why pray if He isn’t?”

“The gospel is so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.”