1. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  2. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  3. 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.
  4. Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
  5. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  6. 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.
  7. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  8. 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).
  9. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  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. Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.
  12. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."