Love between friends isn’t all games and giggles. It means I want to see the best in you, and I hope you have the outspoken audacity to see the best in me. Real friends speak with tears in their eyes, voice shaking, heart breaking, a quiet courage to say ‘You’re better than this.’

Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it.

I’ve always had trouble with this idea of “hearing from God.” I always side-eye those super A+ put-together Christians who were hearing from God every week, and somehow I was outside the door of some secret club where God was throwing around fortune cookies full of His life-changing secrets.Let’s consider that God does speak to us every week. Let’s consider photosynthesis, the spinning of atoms, the burning of stars, the breath we just breathed, your child’s messy drawing, the twitching of your neurons to fire off emotions, a hug from your best friend. Let’s consider the sustaining of our molecules, which is purely by His grace. Let’s see all we are missing when our eyes are locked on a screen when the world is unrolling around us, as God makes His glory known through nature and coincidence. Let’s consider Christ, who is God’s spoken word and His very own glorious radiance (Hebrews 1:2-3). Let’s consider that God is already within the silence, and that even when we do not “feel” Him, God is okay with this too.

God’s sort of love isn’t like that. It’s not like human love. It has no reason to exist except that it does. I love you because I love you. God’s love is eternally grounded in Himself and for you. It’s not a matter of maintenance, but awakening, that you’d simply believe His love to be there and true.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. i might be simple, but more and more, i believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love.

Many times we think someone is ranting, but they’re actually speaking with conviction: and everyone has just forgotten the sound of real passion.  We’re so afraid of absolutes and a strong gut and digging in your heels, that we dismiss the powerful voice of a lonely fighter.  Listen for quiet strength, for humble confidence.  It’s not often someone will stand for what is right, what is true, what is pure.  More often we’re afraid to admit we’re afraid, because the truth is so blinding in a dark world.

was it a bad day? or was it a bad ten minutes that you milked all day?

She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired.

The great and central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God but how unshakably His heart is set on us.

Don’t become who hurt you.

I used to think that Jesus wasn’t a God of adventure - He was the one telling me to behave during Sunday School. But the Jesus I’ve found has called me into the greatest adventure of my life.

I want to talk about what happened without mentioning how much it hurt. There has to be a way. To care for the wounds without reopening them. To name the pain without inviting it back into me.

Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work- it’s a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love them.