Most of your unhappiness in life comes from the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.

the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.

Apathy is passionless living. It is sitting in front of the television night after night and living your life from one moment of entertainment to the next. It is the inability to be shocked into action by the steady-state lostness and suffering of the world. It is the emptiness that comes from thinking of godliness as the avoidance of doing bad things instead of the aggressive pursuit of doing good things.

the main reason God has given us minds is that we might seek out and find all the reasons that exist for treasuring him in all things and above all things.

This is the path toward change. We are called to take it and not wait passively while our minds are drawn away with all kinds of passions that wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11). It is when we focus our minds on the glory of Christ that we are transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). Take this moment to resolve that you will be intentional about what your mind considers. It will dwell on something, and what it dwells on, it becomes like.

The Word brings joy directly and indirectly. Directly by simply showing us the beauty of Christ and his ways and all the good things he has promised to be for us forever. Indirectly by weaning us off the toxic pleasures of the world by means of the superior pleasures of Christ, so that, in purity of heart, we can see the beauty of Christ more clearly.

Mental health is, in great measure, the gift of self-forgetfulness. The reason is that introspection destroys what matters most to us- the authentic experience of great things outside ourselves.

True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with . . . the things of God. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice . . . that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them.

The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.

Therefore, the reason God seeks our praise is not because He won't be complete until He gets it. He is seeking our praise because we won't be complete until we give it. This is not arrogance. It is love.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

If intellectual greatness, apart from any higher consideration, is worthy of honor, then our homage is due to Satan, whose intellectual power no man has ever equaled. But when perverted to self-serving, the greater the gift, the greater curse it becomes. It is moral worth that God values. Love and purity are the attributes He prizes most.