Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.

God doesn't require is to succeed; he only require that you try.

What we do is less than a drop in the ocean. But if it were missing, the ocean would lack something.

Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of the Fall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a "working God." Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity of his existence. —Sinclair Ferguson

people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.

In the Lord, your labour is not in vain: what you do here in faith will stand, will last.

A voice may whisper that it was no image, but only imagination; it was a mirage, a fantasy. But as the water settles, with gentle ripples still visible where the arrows went in, the image will return. We will gaze at it once more, and know that in the Lord our labour is not in vain.

So, then, since the person you are and the world God has made will be gloriously reaffirmed in God's eventual future, you must be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord's work, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess.

But there is no such thing as a small errand in the kingdom of God.

Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn't come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.

If you've ever taught a Sunday school class, led a small group, or taught a Bible study, you know there's a lot more behind these words than what appears on the surface. You know that you don't just get up before a group and teach the Word of God with power and effectiveness apart from a lot of time spent in preparation-not just preparation of the notes and the material, but preperation of your heart and life.

The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have