ULTIMATE JOY

'Ultimate joy comes not from a lover or a landscape or a home, but through them...They point to what is "higher up" and "further back."'

Cornelius Plantinga in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.77.

SIN

'Churches that silence the biblical message of sin and grace simply aren't anywhere near where people actually live their lives, including the kids in the congregation. Kids who read Harry Potter know all about good and evil. Maybe they wouldn't use the word "sin" to describe the evil in the books. Fine. Bracket the word "sin" and talk about what Voldermort does, what the Dementors do. Hollywood screenwriters are so conscious of good and evil that if a character cheats on a good woman or kills an innocent person, something will happen to him. He won't simply get away with it. The formula today is the same as it always has been: let dramatically portrayed evil entertain us, and then punish it satisfyingly by the end of the show. Do this because, of course, the guilty deserve to be punished. Hollywood writers are old fashioned people. They mostly don't go to church so they have never learned that personal guilt for wrongdoing has become passe.' 

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.115. 

PREACHING

'The Bible is a supernatural book with a supernatural story of creation and redemption done by a supernatural God. Preachers without supernatural understandings and expectations end up preaching a tiny gospel about a disappointingly skinny God.' 

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.104. 

SECRETS

'....secrets are potent things. We may think we are honoring someone by telling him our secret. But the knowledge of it may fester in him and turn to poison. Maybe only God can absorb deep human secrets without internal damage.' 

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.76. 

PREACHING

'...preachers face the translator's challenge. Like translators, preachers are trying to say in different words the same thing the text says without inadvertently saying a different thing in different words.' 

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.44. 

READING

'...it is truly better to have read and lost than never to have read at all.' 

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, Reading for Preaching, p.19. 

IDENTITY

'People tend to make two mistakes when they think about the redeemed life. The first is to understimate the sin that remains in us; it's still there and it can still hurt us. The second is underestimate the strength of God's grace; God is determined to make us new.

As a result, all Christians need to say two things. We admit that we are redeemed sinners. But we also say boldly and joyously that we are redeemed sinners.'

Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Beyond Dioubt: Faith-Building Devotions on Questions Christians Ask, p.89.