Category: Random

Standing on the edge of a cliff, I see the open wide world ahead of me. So many possibilities, hundreds of opportunities, plenty of room to dream on. My resolve is to spend the whole candle of my life in pursuit of the things of God. No looking back, no regrets.

With so much going on in the church almost every single day every week, I wonder how church people find time to meet and engage their unchurched neighbors. The church is drowned in the multitudes of its programs that it failed to give its members a breathing space to develop normal relations with people outside their congregation.

Clutter [in church] can often make things look OK, even good. The busyness is a great disguise for the lack of life. The complexity is a great cover-up. Churches can sometimes be fancy coffins.

—Thom S. Rainer, Simple Church

God has given [the pastor] an unquenchable passion for the church, for the Word, and for people. He knew God had set him apart to serve the church. He still does. He still has a deep burden. The nagging in his heart to make disciples through the ministry of the local church is still there. That conviction has not wavered, only grown. But he knows so many things have been placed beside it, even on top of it.

—Thom S. Rainer

The nature of repentance in Scripture precludes the nonsense of partial repentance or contingent repentance. Genuine repentance does not turn from one sin while safeguarding others; partial repentance is as incongruous as partial pregnancy. Loyalty to God in selective areas is no longer loyalty, but treason. To repent of disloyalty in select areas, while preferring disloyalty in others, is no repentance at all. God does not ask us to give up this or that idol while permitting us to nurture several others; he demands, rather, that we abandon idolatry itself and return to the God against whom we have “so greatly revolted.”

—Don A. Carson