Expectancy is the emotion that is triggered when faith is sensed in the human spirit.

When you are on the edge of your purpose, the ledge upon which you stand might begin to shake.

which is maintaining agreement with your prayer. It is impossible to hold on to something that's not first possessed in your heart.

God places tools of faith and objects of faith in our lives to encourage us to continue believing the promises.

Life sometimes hurts like hell but I've discovered that deleting God from the equation doesn't actually help. It merely removes all meaning and morality from the mess, and all real hope from the future

I'd rather be unhappy and know that God is with me, than be happy, comfortable and unsure of God's presence.

I feel like God is waiting to see if I am waiting. If he just flooded in with answers and guidance right now, I would not have changed; I would not have learned to wait and trust without the answers and without a road map for the future. So I'm kind of glad that God was silent, because I actually want to wait; I want to prove my mettle to God. I don't necessarily want ease and instant anything any more.

In this present book, we are taking what Christian philosopher Gary Habermas, in another context, calls "the minimalist facts approach." We are only going to say what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. We are not going to present a hagiography of George Washington, i.e., we will not make him into an ecclesiastical saint. But we do believe that his own words and actions show that he was a Christian and not an unbelieving Deist.

When we reach the point where things simply make no sense, when our thinking about God and life no longer line up, when any sense of certainty is gone, and when we can find no reason to trust God but we still do, well that is what trust looks like at its brightest — when all else is dark.

What makes the Bible God's Word isn't its uncanny historical accuracy, as some insist, but the sacred experiences these stories point to, beyond the words themselves. Watching these ancient pilgrims work through their faith, even wrestling with how they did that, models for us our own journeys of seeking to know God better and commune with him more deeply.

Doubt is God's instrument, will arrive in God's time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.

Trust your experiences, your God moments. They don't work as intellectual arguments for God, but that's exactly the point: intellectual arguments aren't enough, and wanting them to be so sooner or later leads to disappointment. God speaks to us through our whole humanity, not just through part of it. God moments can't be proven to anyone else, but that doesn't make them second best. They are proof—of another kind.