Spiritual people don't float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

I do believe God has given me an incredible opportunity and a platform in a secular environment but still to take a stand for Christ and being a blessing to believers.

I am an athlete for Christ. That's why I play for Him, to give Him glory, to thank Him for giving me the ability to play football.

I do know plenty of atheists, agnostics and skeptics who have become Christians through the years. In fact, several of my friends were once strong atheists but are now committed followers of Jesus.

I know that God lives, my brothers and sisters. There is no question in my mind. I know that this is His work, and I know that the sweetest experience in all this life is to feel His promptings as He directs us in the furtherance of His work.

It is amazing to watch God do through us what we could never accomplish on our own. It is comforting to know we have a God who is, always faithful, desires more for us than we could imagine, and perfectly capable of doing the impossible.

The Holy Spirit is God desiring in you and through you—until it becomes your desiring too.

Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on earth more than "those who are going to heaven.

Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. To allow what God for some reason allows—and uses. And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally. Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God—beyond the fact that God is love itself.

Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God. He is much more saying to us, "Try this," and you will see for yourself that it is true. But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice.

Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened." —Matthew 7:7—8

Our full "Christ Option"—and it is indeed a free choice to jump on board—offers us so much that is both good and new—a God who is in total solidarity with all of us at every stage of the journey, and who will get us all to our destination together in love.