In every dream journey, there comes a moment when you have to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

When God puts a passion in your heart, whether it be relieving starvation in Africa or educating children in the inner city or making movies with redemptive messages, that God-ordained passion becomes your responsibility. And you have a choice to make. Are you going to be irresponsibly responsible or responsibly irresponsible?

Disappointment is like dream defibrillation. If we respond to it the right way, disappointment can actually restore our prayer rhythm and resurrect our dreams.

The defining moments will double as the scariest decisions.

Here's the point: God is in the résumé-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. But those God-given opportunities often come disguised as man-eating lions. And how we react when we encounter those lions will determine our destiny. We can cower in fear and run away from our greatest challenges. Or we can chase our God-ordained destiny by seizing the God-ordained opportunity.

God's definition of going well is unique, distinct, almost eccentric. His definition of wellness is not about health, finances, or job security. It's not about unfailing protection from the vagaries and dangers of a broken world. It's not about life being fair. It's about acceptance.

Our faith doesn't magically make our assumptions about Jesus and the Bible true. Faith can't turn a falsehood into truth. Rightly understood, it's not a blind belief in the unbelievable; it's a rational belief based on a preponderance of evidence.

As in every other topic, our regular practice as Christians should be to seek God's will in his Word, either by explicit command or by reasoning from principles in the Word. We want to see that the answer is in the Bible.

By direct command, example, implication, or principles, God's Word tells us everything we need to know about every aspect of following him in life—from dating to marriage, from working to grieving, from evangelizing to eating. What should churches do? The answer is in the Bible.

People can creatively devise how to approach a mute God, but they must listen to a speaking God.

We cannot finally judge the correctness of what we do in evangelism by the immediate response that we see. It is important to understand this truth, because a failure to understand it can distract well-meaning churches into pragmatic, results-oriented endeavors and it can transform pastors into neurotic people-manipulators.

On October 23, 1963, Barefoot in the Park opened on Broadway. Just before his extremely nervous cast took the stage, Nichols gathered them for a final pep talk. "Everybody relax," Redford says he told them. "You know your positions, you know your laughs, you know your lines, you know where the comfort zones are. So enjoy yourselves, and remember: Everything depends on tonight.