God's saving grace ignites in the hearts of all his children a radical shift in ambition. Where once our thoughts, desires, words, and actions were motivated and directed by our ambition to achieve our definition of personal happiness, by grace they are now shaped by our ambition for the kingdom of God to achieve all God has designed for it to achieve. Where once we were ambitious for what we want, we now are ambitious to do the will of God.

The transcendent glory that every human being quests for, whether he knows it or not, is not a thing; it is a person, and his name is God.

temporary situational emotional high; he is working to produce something much better—eternal joy. The reality is that God has little allegiance to my selfish little wish list. He has not signed on by his grace to deliver to me that catalog of things that I think will make me happy. He has not committed to meet everything I have christened as a need.

But this book is not a theology of kingdom, nor an exposition of the kingdom passages in the Bible. No, it is simply a meditation on what Jesus meant when he called us to "seek first his kingdom." What does it really look like to expand everything our lives contain to touch the size of his kingdom?

God didn't give us his grace in order to make our little claustrophobic kingdoms of one work, but to invite us to a much, much better kingdom.

You have no reason for fear when you answer God's call; you have every reason to be afraid when you put your life in your own hands.

We were made to be more connected to what is above us than to what is below us. To put it another way, our lives were designed to be shaped more by our attachment to the Creator than by the creation. We were made to experience, to be part of, to be consumed by, and to live in pursuit of the one glory that is truly glorious—the glory of God.

When awe of God has captured your heart, ministry will fill your schedule.

we look to creation for life, hope, peace, rest, contentment, identity, meaning and purpose, inner peace, and motivation to continue. The problem is that nothing in creation can give you these things. Creation was never designed to satisfy your heart. Creation was made to be one big finger pointing you to the One who alone has the ability to satisfy your heart.

Life is all about what we look to to fill us.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life.

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.