1. If we just say to God, “We don’t get it, please explain,” he will. He will send us a preacher to point us to his words for more clarification.
  2. My fear of this coming darkness only lasts a moment.
  3. What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.
  4. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  5. Nothing moves or drives Paul more than preaching about “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
  6. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  7. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  8. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  9. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  10. This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
  11. Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
  12. Morons though we all have been, there is nothing we need that Christ hasn’t given us.