Don't picture yourselves as architects coming in with a complete blueprint, but rather as adventurers, trying to decipher a treasure map together.

The story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.

You have only one life to live.It would be best to live your own.

Reading the prophets, says Yancey, is like hearing a lovers' quarrel through the apartment wall.

What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). We need you.

One of the great wonders of Christianity is that you were born into your times, to set your times aright.

Lest we despair, God has given us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11 NLT) and to be specific, it includes the restoration of every precious day of our lives. Heaven is not a memory wipe. it is the time and capacity to truly relish the story of our lives, to see the hand of God in it all (how many times angels rescued you), to be vindicated, and even rewarded.

Nothing is truly lost. This is going to come back to me; this will be in one of my treasure chests Jesus will restore to me.

The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.

The ability to hope and dream.

You can find that life—if you are willing to embark on a great adventure.

What sort of tale have I fallen into? is a question that would help us all a great deal if we wondered it for ourselves.