Every time I see my brother, I just praise God for God's grace in his life. Because if God can change Franklin from a prodigal into a man of God, he can do it for anybody.

I can't help but tell people of the greatest story ever told - God's love and our eternal life.

Yes, in Christianity, the gap that our sin creates between us and God is simply insurmountable. Trying to cross it is like jumping off the Newport Beach pier and trying to leap to Hawaii," he said, gesturing in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean.

The insights that freed Jud were similar to the ones that led to my own recovery from spiritual workaholism after being confronted by my boss years ago. I came to realize that God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God. I could stop working like a slave to justify myself; I just needed to recognize — and celebrate — my adoption as God's child.

That is the joyful task of every follower of Jesus. Someday may it be written about me on my tombstone: He was so amazed by God's grace that he couldn't keep it to himself.

To use a popular illustration, all other religions are spelled "D-O." That is, they are based on people doing something, through their struggling and striving, to somehow earn the good favor of God. [...] By contrast, Christianity is spelled "D-O-N-E," because it's based on what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross.

We can never sink so far that God's grace will not reach us. At the same time, grace does not leave us there. It raises us to new heights.

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. Philip Yancey1

Hazen thought for a moment, then concluded: "You know, even if all religions were figments of our imagination, I would choose Christianity, because it says you can be assured that you're right with God. There's no need for performance anxiety or laboring through lifetime after lifetime. As the Bible says in 1 John 5:13: 'I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Jesus's death has infinite value because he's an infinite God; it was enough to cover all the sins of the world. If we say some sin is too terrible, then we're saying Jesus fell short in his mission. Grace is only grace if it's available even to the Duchs of the world. In fact," he said, straightening himself in his chair, "here's a difficult thing for us to comprehend: God loves Duch as much as he loves you and me.

Grace liberates us. Our tendency toward performance imprisons us.

God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God.