God is not impressed with what PRECEDES your name, but how you PROCEED in His Name."

The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons, with Himself included in that community as its prime sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.

Never let sadness of the past or fear of the future, ruin the happiness in this moment.

It is so easy and effortless for Christians to just join a church and follow its leadership and practices without seeking the Lord for personal discernment.

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel's fatal mistakes was their insistence on having a human king rather than resting on the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, 'they have rejected me from being king over them' (1 Sam. 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change.

Sometimes the Lord allows us to go through tough times so we learn to rely upon Him.