The With

"The Christian faith doesn't have a prescription for how God fixes our problems.

It doesn't have a simple formula for how and when healing happens or how and when eternal life follows death.  

Instead, Christians simply believe that the greatest power in the universe is God's desire to be in relationship with us,  

a relationship we don't earn so we call it joy,  

a relationship we can't match so we call it love,  

a relationship that never ends so we call it glory,  

a relationship that costs God everything so we call it grace.  

And that desire and that relationship are stronger than the other forces in our lives - evil, sin, and death.  

To be a Christian means to be transformed by the discovery that God is with us in such a way that we stop noticing or counting what God does for us.  

It's not about the for. It's about the with."

Samuel Wells