faith and work on Uniqueness

Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you. He custom designed you for a one-of-a-kind assignment. Mine like a gold digger the unique-to-you...

If angels can fly because they take themselves lightly, does God take Himself lightly?

We cannot be true Christians without being original. Nothing gives us personality like prayer. Nothing makes man so original. To be creative, we must live with the Creator. Prayer places man in direct...

No one image or model, however elusive or rich, can do more than offer glimpses and hints toward the divine.

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it.

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

In his wonderful book Run with Horses , Eugene Peterson reminds us of many of the ways in which modern life de-personalizes and degrades us. We become a number and not a name. We are valued for wha...

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Only faith survives; faith which is not a work, not even a negative work; not an achievement, not even the achievement of humility. . . . Faith is the ground, the new order, the light. . . . Faith is ...

God uses the nobodies to show himself to be somebody. God uses the nothings to show himself to be something. And maybe you feel like a nobody, a nothing. My friend, you're the one God's chosen...

None of us can be made whole till we are made whole together.

Any manifestation that reveals Jesus’ true identity occurs because the power of God is at work upon the eyes, ears, and hearts of the recipients

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a true...

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

We were created for goodness and perfection. That’s why we innovate, progress, and change. But if our progress loses its purpose, it cannibalizes our humanity, leaving us distracted and disoriented.

But here’s the truth: what we do is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we do creates an identity that can crack or break or tumble down at any moment.

Have you ever heard of a Stradivarius violin? It’s the gold standard of violins—instantly recognizable and famously expensive. These aren’t $29.95 instruments. One sold for $1 million, another for $4 ...

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.

We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

Nothing good has ever come into the world without opposition, and that is especially true in spiritual matters.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. On the near side of complexity is simplistic; on the far...