Quotes from James MacDonald

Satan mounts his mutiny against God through a deceitful stronghold: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God's heart on trial by whispering insidious lies: "God is holding back on you. He wants you to jump through hoops in order to earn His love. He's stingy. He doesn't have your best interest in mind. You're better off trusting in yourself. Your resources and functional saviors work better then waiting and trusting in Him.

Repentance is shockingly beautiful when we see it not as "I sinned again, I need to repent," but as "I sinned against my God again, but He is calling me back so He can lavish me with His love and forgiveness.

Like David we have a number of self-destructive options we use to avoid repenting and admitting sin. I'll list them and let you come up with personal examples for each: deny, avoid, blame shift, rationalize, and give excuses. If you can't think of how you've used these, you may be stuck in denial!

The satanic strategy of using lies to disguise, divide, and destroy. Let's focus on the middle word of Satan's plan to defeat you. The word is divide and his strategy is to get a wedge between you and men who can support God's work in your life through loving mutual community. As always he does this through lies.

When will we see that the depravity of the human heart is not most clearly on display in the gay pride parade or at the abortion clinic? The greatest failures in human experience are not seen in the activist atheist rallying unbelief or the scorning skeptic ridiculing Jesus Christ, or the senseless wars, or baffling famines. The greatest failure in human existence is the failure of Christ-followers to "love one another earnestly from a pure heart

If counseling is to be restored to the church, affection must be restored to reflection. If counseling is to be restored to the church, delight in God must be restored to doctrines about God. Savoring Christ must be restored to seeing Christ. Tender contrition must be restored to tough conviction. Communication with God must be restored to contending for God.

The people sang to the Lord, not about Him.

Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.

Instead of seeing ourselves as people trying to connect with people, let's see the church as people trying to connect with God and help others do the same.

Repentance. Not a onetime event for the forgiveness of sin and gift of eternal life but a lifetime pattern of humility before a holy God.

Wayne Grudem, my friend and seminary professor, put it well: "God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in different places."

I'll take a bath and then I'll return." No, God is the bath.