1. It’s scary to share my struggle and to show that I have cracks because once I’ve shown my cards, I open myself up for judgment.
  2. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  3. Some explanations are better than others, but they remain our explanations—except if we had some perspective from outside, above, and behind nature.
  4. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  5. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  6. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  7. Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
  8. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  9. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  10. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  11. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  12. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.