This means that if you obey him for a thousand years, you will have no more of his favor than when you first believed.

Only when the greatest pleasure in your life is the knowledge that God is pleased by the way you are living can you handle pleasure properly.

God is not a mindless dispenser of demolition techniques; he is looking for relationship with those who dare to trust him against all other odds.

For example, it is often said today that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were Deists. Yet, each man in a variety of contexts spoke earnestly of their conviction as Theists—that God was both approachable by man and that God played an ever-active role in the affairs of man.

This is how they connected with God—in their time, in their way.

If I were king of Christianity, after limiting church services to forty-five minutes and sermons to ten, as well as outlawing church "share time" altogether, I would proclaim a kingdom-wide decree that, at least for a while until we get it, "believe" should be stricken from all of our Bibles and replaced with trust.

Probably for the first time in my life I was beginning to comprehend that trust was a habit I would need to cultivate.

If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.

Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people are to go out and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test whether or not they will follow My instructions.

But Moses said, “Why are you transgressing the commandment of the LORD? This will not succeed!

But in spite of all this, you did not trust the LORD your God,