1. God gives good gifts to underserving workers. God gives good gifts to all of them.
  2. Faith sees your neighbor not as a means to an end, not as a way to score points, but as an object of love: Christ's love and yours.
  3. The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
  4. I’ve experienced firsthand the promise that God never leaves a congregation empty-handed.
  5. God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
  6. While we wait in tribulation for our white robes (or pants) to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, we confess to one another our seen and unseen stains.
  7. The Holy Spirit unleashes his power through us, his vines, and we then get to watch as his fruits blossom and ripen.
  8. Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
  9. It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
  10. God's faithfulness is constant and consistent. It knows no season. His love for us doesn't fade with the summer sun.
  11. When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
  12. The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.