David

“if we have put our hope and trust in Jesus, we have become a disciple of Jesus. That is part of our true identity.”
― Zondervan Publishing, Transformed: A New Way of Being Christian

“The reason we often are not generous is because we have not yet been “saved” in this area of our lives. We do not fully believe we have a generous God who can meet all our needs and the needs he brings to our attention. He can.”
― Zondervan Publishing, Transformed: A New Way of Being Christian

“life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards.”
― Greg Forster, Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It

“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending; or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale -- or otherworld -- setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories