Belief in Jesus does not come by the waving of a magic wand. It comes by hearing the word of God through Jesus.

When something drops into your life that seems to threaten your future, remember this: the first shockwaves of the bomb are not sin. The real danger is yielding to them. Giving in. Putting up no spiritual fight. And the root of that surrender is unbelief - a failure to fight for faith in future grace. A failure to cherish all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.

So waiting is a holy work Of faith in God. Nor does there lurk Beneath the timing of his ways Some secret malice that displays Itself in holding back the flow Of future grace. God does not go From here to there by shortest routes; He makes a place for faith and doubts. Nor does he hasten on his way, But comes when it is best, today, Or maybe twenty years from now, Or more.

When faith is in fullest operation, it pictures a future with a God who is so powerful and so loving and so wise and so satisfying that this future-picturing faith experiences assurance. Now.

Steve Halliday believed in the book from the beginning. If he hadn't asked to see the sermons in 1983, there may be no Desiring God.

For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.

faith has tasted the glory of God in Christ and treasures it enough that the fullness of it is worth waiting for and suffering for. Faith has seen the truth that part of Christ's glory is his trustworthiness. Therefore, faith can cast itself on the promise of Christ and trust that the fullness of glory and the fullness of joy will surely come.

I spoke the hardest words and almost broke: 'There is another kinsman still More close to you than I. He will Be given legal right to take You if he will. Tomorrow make Your prayer, and I will settle this With elder in the gate.' No kiss That night. But when she left, still dark, She took my hand and drew and arc And said, 'The God of Exodus And flood at dawn will fight for us.' That was our only touch.

Deaf people can be the sharpest hearers and blind people can be the sharpest see-ers. It's not physical. Dullness of hearing, you remember from 6:12 and 3:18, is the failure to make use of the Word heard to nurture faith and bear the fruit of obedience.

In every situation, God is always doing a thousand different things you cannot see and you do not know.

For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.

The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.