“The rationalism that we inherited from the Enlightenment has trained us all to think that everything that we really ‘know’ is that which can be objectively measured and doled out in credit hours. We have created a great illusory mechanism for making ourselves think that we know how people actually know things. And we identify …
Because There Will Be Lots of Them
“You don’t know whether any of your ancestors prayed for you, but wouldn’t it have been glorious if they had? So apply the golden rule, and pray for your descendants” (From To You and Your Children, p. 200).
Not Curious Enough
“How would our loving father not answer such a prayer? But too often the reason we don’t ask is that we don’t really want to know. We belong to that shortsighted school of car maintenance and repair — don’t lift the hood if you don’t want to know” (From To You and Your Children, p. …
Prayer is Not for His Information
“God knows everything already. He is the source of everything already. The reason we pray to Him is that He wants us to learn this” (From To You and Your Children, p. 198).
When Faithfulness is Visible
“Sara appropriated the blessing of the promise through faith. Her faith consisted precisely of this — “she judged him faithful who had promised.” So this then is faith; faith is the natural response to the perceived faithfulness of God. Faith is “judging Him faithful” . . . A man with wobbly faith can get on …
And Five Yards from the Boat Too
“As soon as we begin to look at ourselves walking on water, we find that we are looking at ourselves not walking on water” (From To You and Your Children, p. 194).
A Larger Consistency
“A good border collie does not just decide (for the sake of doctrinal consistency) that he will always nip at a sheep’s left hind leg. He alternates, and does so with a larger purpose in view” (Against the Church, p. 206).
Because That’s How It Works
“If we learn to scatter more fragments of grace, a second glance might reveal them all to have become diamonds the moment they left our hands” (Against the Church, p. 204).
When the Heart is Gone
“So let us try to forget the word evangelical as a demographic description. Let us try to forget the word liturgical as a description of the boring church you grew up in. Let us try to forget the word doctrine as it was handled by that great nineteenth-century divine, the Rev. Dr. Snodgood, in three …
Floating Lazily Away from the Pulpit
“But the Spirit will fall. The thunderhead will roll in. And when it happens, the work of regeneration will be a gully washer, and lots of ecclesiastics will be pretty upset. But many more of them will be soaked through, and it will become increasingly harder to preach our little floating dust cloud sermons” (Against …