1. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  2. 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.
  3. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  4. 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.
  5. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  6. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  7. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  8. Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
  9. We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
  10. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  11. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  12. The nefarious thing about idolatry is that just about anything can become your idol: career, family, fame, wealth, status, spouse, you name it, any good thing can become a ‘god-thing” with ease.