The level of our obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us.
If we want proof of God’s love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God’s love for us.
Worship is the specific act of ascribing to God the glory, majesty, honor, and worthiness which are His.
The great antidote to anxiety is to come to God in prayer. We are to pray about everything. Nothing is too big for Him to handle, and nothing is too small to escape His attention.
No detail of your life is too insignificant for your heavenly Father’s attention.
We ought to be as earnest and frequent in our prayers of thanksgiving when the cupboard is full as we would be in our prayers of supplication if the cupboards were bare.
God makes provision for our holiness, but He gives us the responsibility of using those provisions.
Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God.
We are 100 percent responsible for the pursuit of holiness, but at the same time we are 100 percent dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us in that pursuit. The pursuit of holiness is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the Christian life.
Biblical community is first of all the sharing of a common life in Christ.
Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing.
We might say God’s wrath is His justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin is always judgment.
The opposite of retaliation is to entrust ourselves to God, who judges justly.
Because peace is a fruit of the Spirit, we are dependent upon the Spirit’s work in our lives to produce the desire and the means to pursue peace. But we are also responsible to use the means He has given us and to take all practical steps to attain both peace within and peace with others.
Which of us, then, does not offend frequently with our tongue? The real problem, however, is not our tongues but our hearts.
Introspection can easily become the tool of Satan, who is called the accuser. One of his chief weapons is discouragement. He knows that if he can make us discouraged and dispirited we will not fight the battle for holiness.
May we be as severe with ourselves over our own subtle sins as we are with the vile sins we condemn in others.
It is our response to our circumstances rather than the degree of difficulty that determines whether or not we are discontent.
We fail to see the gospel as the solution to our greatest problem-our guilt, condemnation, and alienation from God. Beyond that, we fail to see it as the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with Him. As a result, many believers live in spiritual poverty.
God never wastes pain. He always uses it to accomplish his purpose. And his purpose is for his glory and our good. Therefore we can trust him when our hearts are aching or our bodies are racked with pain.