Perhaps the best gift you can bring to God is not a list of good deeds, but evidence of a character that has become transformed to the image of Jesus Christ. The deeds will follow the character.

Not every thought makes a good article and sometimes an entire article can be distilled down to a single thought. For those reasons, I like to occasionally create what I have created here–a roundup of brief, random thoughts about Christian living. Some of these are original and some are drawn from articles I’ve written in the past. I hope there’s something here that is helpful to you.

In all likelihood, no one will ever sin against you more frequently than your spouse. It would be wise, then, to marry a person who knows when and how to ask forgiveness. In the same way, you will never sin against anyone more frequently than your spouse. It would be wise, then, to marry a person who knows when and how to extend forgiveness.

The man who desires sole authority within the local church and is convinced he can handle it proves that he is unworthy of having not only sole authority but any authority at all. Such a man is not fit for leadership.

The church is in desperate need of elders, yet there are surprisingly few men who exist at that point where willingness meets qualification. There are almost always some who are willing but not qualified and some who are qualified but not willing. What the church needs so badly is men who are both. Thus if you are willing, pray that God would make you qualified and if you are qualified, pray that God would make you willing!

It is wonderful to plan to be kind to another person tomorrow, but it is better by far to be kind to that person today. Today’s opportunity for kindness is the one the Lord has presented to you and means for you to fully embrace.

God has gifted you in the ways he deems right and put the calling upon you to fan those gifts into flame. You don’t need to concern yourself with what he has given others, nor be resentful of what he has kept from you, but to simply trust his wisdom in both the giving and the withholding. You need to accept it all—the parts you love and the parts you don’t care for, the parts you would have chosen anyway, and the parts you would have fled from. You need to accept it all and steward it with faithfulness.

There are not many philanthropists who are in the business of designing apps. It is safe to assume that each one of your apps is meant to extract some kind of cost from you and provide some kind of benefit to somebody else.

In all your sorrows and all your afflictions, in your trials and all your losses, you can have confidence that God never means to destroy you and never means to ultimately harm you. To the contrary, he means to purify you and use you, to expand your capacity to love, to prepare and equip you for greater service. It is always his will that you pass through those fires refined but unburned, purified but unharmed, sanctified but unscarred. For God uses them all for good.

It is good to consider God’s joy in the deeds you do, but you should also consider God’s joy in who and what you become. Perhaps the best gift you can bring to God is not a list of good deeds, but evidence of a character that has become transformed to the image of Jesus Christ. The deeds will follow the character.

The time for you to quit lifting your petitions is the time when God tells you that he will no longer listen. The day to give up praying is the day when God tells you that he has closed his ears and become deaf to your voice. The moment to stop pleading is the moment when God assures you that his heart is now hardened and his hand, once opened to supply your needs, is now closed to cut them off. Until that day—a day that will never come—continue to pray, trusting that God continues to listen and to provide.

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