If we’re honest with ourselves, we really don’t want God’s grace. Maybe a more accurate way of putting it is that we don’t want to have to need it…In a sense, we buy into the lie that says we never needed God’s grace until we blew it! Kind of like my saying that until I got Vitiligo my skin was perfect. Like I never had a zit!

Religious ritual cannot take away sin. The Jewish people made a tragic mistake. They took the symbols of sacrifice and started to treat them like they were the real thing, like adherence to religious ritual could actually take away sin. People do that today when they think that certain religious rituals (like taking communion, regular church attendance, tithing, or saying a ‘Hail Mary’) can take away their sin

[W]e are not to try to guess the result of our behavior. We are supposed to do what God commands. We are not responsible for the results of what we do. We are responsible to obey whatsoever God commands. We are called not to success, but to obedience.

T]he Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Indeed, poor tips are an example of what Moses teaches in Deuteronomy 25 -- muzzling an ox when it is treading out grain (Deuteronomy 25:4). It relinquishes responsibility to the Great Commission, because the Gospel is about grace. Of all the people in the world, Christians should understand that they are unworthy to be recipients of the great mercy, grace and generosity shown them in Christ

Notice that in the current debate about spiritual gifts many in the charismatic movement (but probably not most Pentecostals) agree that apostles - in the sense of those who are "first" among the gifts given to the Church, like the 12 and Paul - are not present in the Church today. In that respect, at least, whether or not they care to think of themselves as such, the large majority of today's charismatics are in fact "cessationists."

“They are all greatly concerned about the ramifications of the ruling, but mostly for Jewish and Muslim life in Germany,” Mr. Westerwelle said. There are 100,000 Jews and four million Muslims living here.

Ethnic specific churches historically have served as a place of cultural cultivation and identity affirmation. It is in the black church that I first learned God made me black on purpose and that I can be proud of how God made me. Who I am as a person was forged within the confines of an ethnic specific congregation

Chuck Colson often said that Christians cannot impose their views on anyone. Instead, we propose. That applies to human sexuality. Our job is to hold out to a hurting world a better way to live, a way that points to love and human flourishing, to human wholeness.

But, as J.I. Packer points out…the truth actually lies in the opposite direction. Rather than being a hindrance to evangelism, God’s sovereignty is the grounds for believing that our evangelism has any chance of success at all.