Put his words into practice and find them to be true.

This is the essence of the death-to-self life: that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for him who died for us and rose again.

Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically.

I promise to be on your team. I promise to be faithful. I promise to be quick to forgive. I promise to always surprise you. I promise to stand by you. I promise to trust you, respect you, follow you, honor you and support you. I promise to love you, always.

No relationship can continue very long at its highest emotional pitch. But fidelity prepares us for the return of these moments

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

God does not ask if we are able. God asks if we are available." And the weakness we offer him, he turns into a strength.

In the way of Christ the reward of work well done is more work to do.

What a wonderful time it is for each of us to do his or her small part in moving the work of the Lord on to its magnificent destiny.

The work of the Lord is done by ordinary people who work in an extraordinary way.

The Christian liturgy draws us deeper and deeper into the innermost recesses of mystery, but then lands us back out on the street. We are not allowed to stay at the altar. We have to go back out to committee meetings, traffic jams, laundry, dirty diapers—where we will be enacting what we have encountered in the liturgy.

For it seems to me that the first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it.