“You don’t want to be the gardener who gets so focused on pulling weeds that he forgets he is doing so in order to grow something else. It is supposed to be a flower garden, not a no-weeds dirt patch.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 68
And Make It a Slow Growth Tree
“How should you deal with it when your theology tells you that you area living on the edge of a precipice? You should go out to the workshop. You should plant a tree. You should make dinner.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 64
Hanging Judges, Easy Graders
“In the flesh, people who like to test things tend to be ornery; they like to see people crash and burn. In the flesh, people who are eager to hold fast to that which is good tend to want everything to be good; everybody gets a participant ribbon. And these two errors feed off each other.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 57
Biblical Church Membership
[Concerning Heb. 13:7,17; 1 Thess. 5:12-13]
“These exhortations require the leaders of the church to know the names of those they are responsible for, and it requires the members of the church to know the names of those they are responsible to. The requirements are gibberish otherwise.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 56
The Coming Pivot
“The Jewish War would ‘fill up’ the sins of Israel (Matt. 23:32). That event would begin the ‘times of the Gentiles,’ a period that would eventually be completed. I take that completion as being marked by the conversion of the Jews, an event that has not yet happened (Rom. 11:15). This means we are still living in the times of the Gentiles.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 52
The Point of Minding the Store
“Loving more and more means gathering more and more, which means minding the store, and then being generous with what you have gained. We give in order to get, in order that we might be able to give even more.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 45
Honest Giving
“Now the great Pauline principle here is ‘mind thine own business.’ Tend to thine own knitting. You do this, not because you are telling the rest of the body to get lost, but rather because you need to acquire something before you can give it. You cannot give what you do not have, and cannot have something to give unless you came by it honestly.”
Mines of Difficulty, pp. 44-45
Because That Is How It Feels
“Something is transfat, for example, when a baby carrot identifies as salty grease on the inside.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 41
Two Wills
“And remember there are also times when the two kinds of wills intersect. When Jesus died on the cross, it was the will of God (Luke 22:42; Acts 4:26-28) even though it was accomplished by wicked hands (Acts 2:23). The violation of God’s preceptive will by Judas, Herod, Pontius Pilate, and the Sanhedrin was the instrument God used to accomplish His decretive will. We must always remember that God is God, and we are not.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 40
Breathing the Same Air
“Catechized by our digital world, we think we have conquered distance when we really haven’t. Our letters have gotten much more sophisticated than they were in Paul’s day, but our ‘face-to-face’ communication is not really the equivalent of being there. Our texting, and Zoom meetings, and online sermons, and POD books, and blogs, and phone calls, are just souped-up letters. They are not an adequate replacement for in-person community. Paul would have used them all, but he still would have yearned to be with the Thessalonians, in the same room, breathing the same air, and not through a mask either.”
Mines of Difficulty, p. 36