My administration will be more supportive of the good works done here than any administration in the history of this country because I understand the power of faith, that faith can change lives.

What's amazing when you get up and do something is what God does in your life. We just have to get up and do something.

And that's the great thing about living the Christian life and trying to live by faith, is you're trying to get better every day. You're trying to improve.

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life. And

Faith is not saving faith if it tries to trust Christ for the wrong things. So this makes clear that trust per se, without reference to what we trust him for, is not the essence of a saving relationship to Christ.

The extent of our sacrifice coupled with the depth of our joy displays the worth we put on the reward of God.

One way to describe this problem is to say that when these people "receive Christ," they do not receive him as supremely valuable.

The fruit of love is worked in us through the Spirit 'by hearing with faith.' The Spirit will not bear his fruit in us apart from our faith. Why is this?..The answer seems to be that the Holy Spirit loves to glorify the all-satisfying dependability of Christ and his Word. If the Holy Spirt simply caused acts of love in the human heart without any clear, ongoing causal connection with faith in Christ's promises, then it would not be plain that Christ is honored through love.

The practical effect of this path is that I do not ask you to pray for a special whisper from God to decide if Jesus is real. Rather I ask you to look at the Jesus of the Bible. Look at him. Don't close your eyes and hope for a word of confirmation. Keep your eyes open and fill them with the full portrait of Jesus provided in the Bible. If you come to trust Jesus Christ as the Lord and God, it will be because you see in him a divine glory and excellence that is simply is what it is -- true

While the sinner cannot save himself, he still has something to do to secure salvation. "him that cometh to Me," says Christ, "I will in no wise cast out." John 6:37. But we must come to him; and when we repent of our sins, we must believe that he accepts and pardons us. Faith is the gift of God, but the power to exercise it is ours. Faith is the hand by which the soul takes hold upon the divine offers of grace and mercy.

Finally I asked my friend Judy, who spent many years as a student of Sufism and who embodies fana —the self-annihilating love of God—as well as anyone I know. When I asked her to define spirituality for me, she thought for a moment and said, 'Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn't make up.' I loved that. I also did not know what it meant.

We wanted More. We wanted a deeper sense of purpose. We wanted a stronger sense of God's presence.