Nick

“That means there has never been a parent on earth who wants joy for his or her children as much as your Father in heaven wants joy for you, his child. There has never been a human father who wanted to answer his child’s petitions as much as God wants to answer yours. Yet we know that God is not only loving but holy and just. How can he shower blessings down on sinful people who deserve the opposite? The answer is that Jesus got the scorpion and the snake so that we could have food at the Father’s table. He received the sting and venom of death in our place (cf. 1 Cor 15:55; Heb 2:14–15; Gen 3:15).”
― Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“We are as strictly and solemnly commanded to pray as in the others . . . not to kill, not to steal, etc.”165 We must pray whether we feel like it or not.”
― Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

“Here we are able to reach a major conclusion of this study. None of these major figures who constituted the inner circle of Jesus would have become or remained followers of Jesus after the crucifixion if there was no resurrection and no resurrection appearances of Jesus. The church, in the persons of its earliest major leaders, was constituted by the event of the resurrection, coupled with the Pentecost event! The stories of these figures, especially their post-Easter stories, are the validation of this fact. There would be no church without the risen and appearing Jesus.”
― Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories & Bad History-Why We Can Trust the Bible