You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. – ANNE LAMOTT.

We must preoccupy ourselves less with trying to be like Him and more with simply being with Him.

We are not only to love those who are like us. We are even – no, especially – to love those who are not like us.

For us preachers, Tim said, the longer it takes people to figure out where we stand on politics, in all likelihood the more faithfully we are preaching Jesus.

There is something incredibly attractive and inviting about people who stop pointing fingers and posing and pretending to be totally good and totally right, and instead start taking themselves less seriously and openly and freely admit that they are not yet what they should be.

Loveliness, or holiness, or the fruit of the Spirit, or whatever we are going to call it, will not grow in us when we seek it directly. It is not fruit we should be seeking; it is Jesus.

Are we less concerned about defending our rights – for Jesus laid down his rights – and more concerned about joining Jesus in his mission of loving people, places, and things to life?

Even when the local church has become less than it should be, the biblical vision is to reform the church, not to abandon it.

Christianity always flourishes most as a life-giving minority, not as a powerful majority. It is through subversive, countercultural acts of love, justice, and service for the common good that Christianity has always gained the most ground.

Better to be lumped in with gluttons and drunks than with image-conscious Pharisees.