If we don’t live for him, we end up fighting God himself.

Conversation with God leads to an encounter with God. Prayer turns theology into experience.

God's Kingdom is "present in its beginnings, but still future in its fullness. This guards us from an under-realized eschatology (expecting no change now) and an over-realized eschatology (expecting all change now). In this stage, we embrace the reality that while we're not yet what we will be, we're also no longer what we used to be.

God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzlingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.

We must be far harder on ourselves in fractious, humble repentance, that we are on the unbelieving culture around us...We should be very understanding toward people who have failed to believe in Christ because of the weakness of the Church’s testimony. A lot of what is happening in our culture today may be more our fault that we are willing to admit. —Exiles in a Foreign Land

Christ's miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again--a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict.

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.

Sin isnʼt only doing bad things; it’s more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry

But here we see the peace of God is not the absence of negative thoughts, it is the presence of God himself.

Gratitude is what you feel. Thanksgiving is what you do.