The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection.

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Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.

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Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.

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One way to define spiritual life is getting so tired and fed up with yourself you go on to something better, which is following Jesus.

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Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.

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Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

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To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we can't separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the way that he is doing it. To follow Jesus is as much, or maybe even more, about feet as it is about ears and eyes" (The Way of Jesus, Eugene H. Peterson, 22).

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We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.

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The gospel is never about everybody else; it is always about you, about me. The gospel is never truth in general; it's always a truth in specific. The gospel is never a commentary on ideas or cultures or conditions; it's always about actual persons, actual pains, actual troubles, actual sin; you, me; who you are and what you've done; who I am and what I've done.

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