christian living on Cost

A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love th...

Compassion costs. It is easy enough to argue, criticize and condemn, but redemption is costly, and comfort draws from the deep. Brains can argue, but It takes heart to comfort.

Entering the kingdom is just like this: it’s a thing of great joy and great cost. The cost is clear, but nothing is compared with what is being gained.

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through....

God's grace and forgiveness, while free to the recipient, are always costly for the giver. From the earliest parts of the Bible, it was understood that God could not forgive without sacrifice. No ...

Grace is a gift that costs everything for the giver and nothing for the recipient.

The greatest temptation of our time is impatience, in its full original meaning: refusal to wait, undergo, suffer. We seem unwilling to pay the price of living with our fellows in creative and profoun...

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and...

The cost of food in the kingdom is hunger for the Bread of Life.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market… Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system…. Chea...

J.B. Phillips was a successful pastor and prolific author in the mid-twentieth century. He was a colleague and friend of C. S. Lewis’s, and it was Lewis who personally endorsed Phillips’s translation ...

It costs something to be a real Christian, according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, an Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness ...

Genuine confession and repentance can be costly, as I have discovered in dealing with offenders. Take the case of the young man in the Washington area, deeply involved with his church and solidly conv...

For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or ch...

Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be carefu...

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

Jesus never asks us to do something he wouldn’t do himself. He calls us to a life of faith, not a life of comfort.

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

Selfless love is always costly. Fear can’t afford it, pride doesn’t understand it, but friends never forget it.

Many years ago a senior executive of the then Standard Oil Company made a wrong decision that cost the company more than $2 million. John D. Rockefeller was then running the firm. On the day the news ...

Ministry that costs nothing, accomplishes nothing.

The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

Sanctification costs to the extent of "an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth and an immense broadening of all our interests in God.

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

In most western societies, what do people think of when you say "armor of God"? I wouldn't be surprised if the image that comes to mind is the kind of plate armor you see in movies abou...

Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord. —Matthew Desmond, E...

We may find it hard to believe Jeremiah’s words that the heart is “deceitful above all things.” We would rather look outward and think, Yes, others may be quite foolish and misguided. But I have a ...