Thousands of Purposes in Thousands of Things We Cannot See

God is never doing just one thing in what He does with us. He is always doing thousands of things that we cannot see. He never has only one purpose in what He does. He always has thousands of purposes in everything He does. He is infinitely wise, and everything He does relates to everything else that He does sooner or later. For those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, all of them — all of them! — work together for good.

John Piper, You Will Never Be Thirsty Again

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The Church Is a Spiritual Workshop

The local church, therefore, may be viewed as a spiritual workshop for the development of agape love. Thus the stresses and strains of a spiritual fellowship offer the ideal situation for the testing and maturing [of love]…. The local congregation is one of the very best laboratories in which individual believers may discover their real spiritual emptiness and begin to grow in agape love.

Paul E. Billheimer in Robert L. Peterson and Alexander Strauch, Agape Leadership (Littleton, CO: Lewis & Roth Publishers, 1991), 9-10.

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We Are Far too Easily Pleased

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses