Quotes from Leonard Sweet

How many Nicodemites are there in every corner of Christianity whose versitis has caused them to be more committed to words than to the Word Made Flesh? How many have made a religion of words and lost sight of God's Image-Made-Story?

The more we are the Presence of Christ for others, the more present we are for Christ to speak to us.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. —G. K. Chesterton12

The first word God speaks to human beings in the Bible—God's very first commandment—is "Eat freely" (Genesis 2:16, NASB). The last words out of God's mouth in the Bible—his final command? "Drink freely" (see Revelation 22:17).

Of the three traditional ways of making a living — mud, blood, and grease — preaching involves all three: the mud pies of creativity, the blood bank of living in the Word, and the grease pit of hard work and dirty hands.

To know the gospel . . . to really know the gospel . . . is to know him who is the good news.

The more I discover what I am, the more miserable I get; the more I discover who God is and who God made me, the happier I become.

preachertainment"?

Jesus didn't care about a "holy table" as the religious establishment defined "holy." For Jesus a holy table was one that was open to anyone, a table where all God's children were present.

In sum, if Jesus isn't surprising you, you've probably stopped growing spiritually.

True love frees us, and at the same time it binds us:

You never get a blessing for yourself. You get a blessing to bless others. In the words of the black church, "a blessing can't get to you unless it first can go through you." We are blessed to bless.

As science turns toward the realm of the Spirit to understand the physical universe, Space, Matter, Time are more prone to induce reverence than arrogance among scientists, who are sounding more like Isaiah in the temple than Isaac Newton under the apple tree.

It is more important that our churches have tables that are relationally correct than liturgically correct. Rules aren't "truth"; we don't follow out of slavish obedience to something absolute. We follow preestablished rules because we want to signal our love of community….

The meal is the message. The gospel is an invitation to go to Jesus' house for a meal. The life we live is the journey to that banquet….

You can't up-up-and-away in creativity and innovation without spending down-on-the-ground time in the muck and the mire.

The greatest blessing you will ever bestow in your life you may never know. And you don't need to know. We don't have to do spectacular things. We just have to keep doing what God has called us to do. In a very real sense, that boils down to bringing people to the table, and trusting God to… bring in a harvest decades or generations later.

The one elementary but elemental factor in all civilizations that collapsed into extinction is the failure to read the handwriting on the wall, the failure to respond to warning signs. Every extinct culture hurled signs high into the heavens for all to see. But every collapsing culture failed to read and heed these flares.52

Jewish males prayed a daily prayer of thanksgiving, which ended: Praise be to God who has not made me a non-Jew. Praise be to God who has not made me an ignorant person. Praise be to God who has not made me a woman.68

Do you want to hear Jesus speak? Go to where the wounds are. Find wounded people, hurting people, suffering people, and you will find Jesus.

Whatever God calls you to do, it's going to be bigger than you are.

If work really were such a good thing, then the rich would surely have found a way to keep it for themselves. HAITIAN PROVERB

Truth is both reason and revelation—and both can surprise us.

Everything that surrounds you can give you something.51 —Hungarian photographer André Kertész