Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn't always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions?

The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.

If you start your own thing, you can learn a lot really fast from doing things wrong.

See failures as learning experiences, not character faults.

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.

I have given up the idea that there is an opposition-free church out there. But I have gained something else - an appreciation for the gift of opposition. When it comes, I learn something about my motives. When it comes, I get to test my courage.

But I think my mistakes became the chemistry for my miracles. I think that my tests became my testimonies.

Even our deepest disappointments will ultimately prove to be gatekeepers for future delight.

There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of - do you want to know? - you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn't that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: 'No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.

Just as gold is purified in the fire, so the soul is purified in sufferings.

Infinite humiliation and grace, and then a striving born of gratitude — this is Christianity.