Quotes about Renewal

The Breath of God brings life to dead things.

Pruning includes purging the wrong thinking, the negative attitudes, and the wrong people that surround you.

A revival is God breathing fresh life upon dry bones!

In prayer we inhale as God breathes his new life into us, and then in evangelism we exhale to breathe God's life upon a dying world.

We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don't, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren't really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what did I sign up for? This Christianity thing is hard. Deep breath . . .] The apostle Paul chimes in, too: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19—20)

Being "saved" by God is an ongoing process of growth and transformation, of dying and rising, of being "conformed to the image of his [God's] Son," as Paul puts it (Romans 8:29). Following Jesus means experiencing the taste of resurrection and ascension now—whether doing laundry, paying bills, or leading nations.

Getting there is all about dying, and each cycle of dying and rising we come to in our lives brings us, I believe, to greater insight into our deep selves, where Christ lives "in us" and our lives are "hidden" in God.

Grace grows best in winter.

This theme has a lot of moving parts. The bottom line is that when God saves Israel, it is an "act of creation"—or perhaps better, "an act of re-creation." To save is to re-create because to be saved is to start anew.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.”

And I establish My covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD.