To speak about depth means that there is more going on than what we see on the surface. To love deeply or care deeply or value deeply means we have devoted time and effort and thought. To suffer deeply means to be wounded at the soul level. “Depth” is an expression of spiritual vastness.
The unlimited neediness of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.
For Jesus, identity and acceptance come before achievement and ministry. This is joy no one can take away. You cannot earn acceptance.
Your soul connects your thoughts and your sensations and your gratitude and your will and sends a message to your entire being. You can send that message to other persons; you can send it to God.
Real life, however, begins when I die to the false god that is me.
The more you think you’re entitled to, the less you will be grateful for. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude. We wonder why in our world we keep getting more and more and more and keep being less and less and less grateful.
The soul of one person can become intertwined with the soul of another. Aristotle is supposed to have said: “What is friendship? It is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” The ancient term for such a relationship is “soul friend,” defined as one with whom I have no secrets. The ancient Celtic Christians said that “a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.
Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be.
When the will has become enslaved by its need, when the mind has become obsessed with the object of its desire, when the appetite of the body has become master rather than servant, the soul is disordered. The ultimate reality behind human dissatisfaction is sinful souls that have been cut off from the God we were made to rest in. That’s why we’re dissatisfied.
Good habits are enormously freeing – we accomplish good things almost on autopilot. One study from Duke University found that more than 40 percent of the actions people take every day aren’t decisions, but habits. Good habits free us, but when sin becomes a habit, our souls lose their freedom.
Self-improvement is no more God’s plan than self-salvation. God’s plan is not just for us to be saved by grace – it is for us to live by grace.
Repenting of our sin is never despairing of our sin; it is always done in hope.
The world conspires against our souls by blinding us to the depth and glory of their God-given design and tempting us to be satisfied with immediate gratification.
A very simple way to guard your soul is to ask yourself, “Will this situation block my soul’s connection to God?
The Spirit wants to make you threatening to all the forces of injustice and apathy and complacency that keep our world from flourishing.
The most important thing about you,” Dallas would often say, “is not the things that you achieve; it is the person that you become.
Flourishing is not measured by outward signs such as income, possessions, or attractiveness. It means becoming the person he he had in mind in creating you. Flourishing means moving toward God’s best version of you.
God never grows two people the same way. God is a hand-crafter, not a mass-producer.
When you discover your strengths, you are learning an indispensible part of what it means to be made in the image of God.
When you help other people discover their strengths, you are helping the image of God to be restored in another human being.