Page 83:

O the comfort, the inexpressible comfort,
of feeling safe with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts,
nor measure words,
but to pour them all out,
just as it is,
chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keeping what is worth keeping,
and then,
with a breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.”

Page 162:

The parable of the Great Supper reveals that a preoccupation with the insignificant makes it impossible to bring priorities into perspective. Rarely does the Spirit of God shout at a person.

Page 15:

Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.

Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.

Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity's enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to cary though with his high estimate of them.

Page 284:

To every person we can say with confidence, "You, in the mist of your actual life there, are exactly the person God wanted."

Page 222:

There actually is a "ministry of condemnation," and it has a certain "glory" (2 Cor 3:9). I have observed many good people who seem to feel a positive obligation to condemn others, and in some cases they do it without anger or contempt, even with some degree of sorrow and compassion. Yet the effects of condemnation remain the same. It remains a stinging attack, a shocking assault upon the one condemned. Whatever good it may do in human affairs comes at a very high price.

And often it grows into shame. Shame seems most widespread and deepest among the very people who take rightness and goodness most seriously. It is a dimension of condemnation that reaches into the deepest levels of our souls. In shame we are self-condemned for being the person we are. It touches our identity and causes self-rejection. We feel ourselves to be a failure just for being the person we are. We wish to be someone else. But of course we cannot. We are trapped, and our life is made hopeless.

Page 222 - the law of reciprocity of condemnation:

The result of condemning and blaming is sure to be a counterattack in the very same terms. Parents who have reproached a child for using drugs, for example, soon find themselves condemned for coffee, tobacco, or alcohol use. This is a well-known case of exactly what Jesus said: "Don't condemn or you will be condemned. As you have meted out condemnation to others, so they will mete out condemnation to you (Matt 7:1-2).

Page 228:

The very idea of "compulsory education," of forcing young people to be in school - except where, very wisely and gently, quite small children are concerned - illustrates this misguided practice of pushing valuable things on people; and its disastrous outcome in contemporary society exactly confirms the truth of what Jesus had to say. His comment has actually become a proverb but unfortunately with a meaning far removed from what he had in mind.

"Do not," he said, "give dogs sacred things to eat, nor try to get pigs to dine on pearls. For they will simply walk all over them and turn and take a bite out of you" (Matt 7:6).

Page 229:

And what a picture this is of your efforts to correct and control others by pouring our good things, often truly precious things, upon them - things that they nevertheless simply cannot ingest and use to nourish themselves. Often we do not even listen to them. We "know" without listening. Jesus saw it going on around him all the time, as we do today. And the outcome is usually exactly the same as with the pig and the dog. Our good intentions make little difference. The needy person will finally become angry and attack us. The point is not the waste of the "pearl" but the that the person given the pearl is not helped.

Page 230:

God has paid an awful price to arrange for human self-determination. He obviously places great value on it. It is, after all, the only way he can get the kind of personal beings he desires for his eternal purposes. And just as we are not to try to manipulate others with impressive language of any kind (Matt. 5:37), so we are not to harass them into rightness and goodness with our condemning's and our "pearls" or holy things.

Page 273:

Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically.

Page 286:

It is not true, I think, that we fulfill our obligations to those around us by only living the gospel. There are many ways of speaking inappropriately, of course - even harmfully - but it is always true that words fitly spoken are things of beauty and power that bring life and joy. And you cannot assume that people understand what is going on when you only live in their midst as Jesus' person. They may just regard you as one more version of human oddity.

Page 58:

When you link your gifts with your passion, you begin to play a powerful role in the body of Christ. You will find such joy and motivation when this is taking place. In fact, when you are operating in your gift and passion, you will experience maximum effectiveness and minimum weariness. On the other hand, when you are operating outside of your gift or passion, you will experience maximum weariness and minimum effectiveness.

Page 378:

During an interview with Pajares by Madewell and Shaughnessy (2003), Pajares noted the importance of nurturing academic confidence. After sharing an experience with a student who discovered that it was just as important for the professor to believe in students' performance ability as it was for students to believe in themselves, Pajares related "Educational practices should be guaged not only by the skills and knowledge they impart for present use but also by what they do to students' beliefs about their capabilities, which affects how they approach the future" (p. 378).