Why don't people ask us about our hope? The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do. Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life.

Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.

The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.

The Word frees us from smallness of mind (1 Kings 4:29) and from threatening confinements (Psalm 18:19).

He came to destroy sin because it is fatal.

Our lives become trivial. And our capacity for magnificent causes and great worship dies.