With Christ as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the future is secure already. It’s solid right now, even when the cords seem to be fraying.

Our God is the one who brings back the exile, who restores the outcast, he is the one who devises means to do so.

God's Son comes to deal with the infestation of sin, but in an unforeseen twist of grace, he’s the only one who goes under the knife.

God is not a preoccupied parent, he’s an invested and interested tender loving Father. He values what perplexes us.

God has in fact executed his plans for his people, plans of peace (probably a better translation than welfare), a future, and a hope in Jesus Christ.

God uses the unlikely, the unexpected, and sometimes even the unsavory to deliver us and to crush the heads of his enemies

God picks the unexpected and the unlikely, and goes to the unforeseen places, stacking the odds against himself, in order that age after age might stand in open-mouthed wonder at his sovereignty in and over all things.

But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw his arrest not as the kingdom’s program being thwarted but as it being “fulfilled.”

God always keeps his promises even if/when we don’t. God is always faithful even if/when we aren’t.

God leads us to the refuge that’s more secure and safe than any man-made thing, more than anything we own, more than anything that owns us.

Ultimately, there is only one Lord of the Universe, and he does not share power. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.

The place where it is most difficult for us to accept God’s will is when suffering, calamities, and finally, death itself.