After waking up, I take my vitamins and eat fruit or, sometimes, bread with garlic, which is good for your health.
God wants to change us so much that it intrigues others.
God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard.
If God cared only about religious activities, then the Pharisees would have been heroes of the faith.
People who are obsessed with God are known as givers, not takers. Obsessed people genuinely think that others matter as much as they do, and they are particularly aware of those who are poor around the world (James 2:14-26).
Churchgoers all across the nation say the Holy Spirit has entered them. They claim that God has given them a supernatural ability to follow Christ, put their sin to death, and serve the church. Christians talk about being born again say that they they were dead but now have come to life. We have become hardened to those words, but they are powerful words that have significant meaning. Yet when those outside the church see no difference in our lives, they begin to question our integrity, out sanity, or even worse, our God. And can you blame them?
A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled up on top of it.
A friend of mine said something powerful at his grandfather's funeral. He said that the greatest lesson from his grandfather's life was that he died empty, because he accomplished everything he wanted, with no regrets. I think that, along with leaving a legacy, would be the greatest sign of success.
Peoples lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, unfathomable-deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. . . . What I wanted [to write down] was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together-radiant, everlasting.
What was your life anyway but the tiny black spot of what you've done against the infinite white of possibility?
You know, Leonard Cohen is amazing, just a mastermind, and really one of the great geniuses of our time.