Matt Chandler

"Augustine in City of God pictures a resurrection in which the bodily systems we no longer need to protect ourselves can use energy to praise God."

"Adoration drives obedience, but throughout history people are prone to forget the faithfulness of God yesterday."

"I think "HALLELUJAH" translates into "HALLELUJAH" in every language out there."

"It is an EVIL thing to be an expert in the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters. We need to be experts in the strengths of our brothers and sisters."

"Institutions and cultures are not immortal. Humans, Christian and non-Christian, are. Compared to us, our country is a gnat."

"The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing."

"What has defined our faith since the beginning is open-ended gladness."

"God doesn't want meerly action but hearts driving action."

"I've grown more OK with mystery as I've gotten older."

"God's people are the stage upon which His forgiveness becomes visible. They are never more authentic than when they ask for forgiveness and forgive others."

"Even though every identity marker I have can be taken from me, the grace and peace of the Trinity overflows into the life of the believer."

"The Word of God bares weight on all ages always."

"I am praying that the issues from the last 12 generations go into the ground with me so I have NEW issue is to pass on to my son."

"Could it be that God is so intensely personal that He would burn down your world in hopes of building it back?"

"Church is not meant to be fun. It's meant to be formative."

"Privileged people can fall into the trap of universalizing experiences and laying them across other people’s experiences as an interpretive lens."

"You are being discipled by something."

"A bad song you can't forget is called an earworm. The way to get rid of an earworm is to deliberately remember an equally awful song."

"When we heed God's Word, we are rejecting how the world tries to disciple us."

"This passage, by the way, doesn't just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife's hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligondendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God. It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball - it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God. How horrible hell must be."