Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.
To some degree the answers to many of our petitions would be facilitated by changes in us, but we usually do not take time to consider this as we pray.
Everything in this life is going to be taken away from us, except one thing: God’s love, which can go into death with us and take us through it and into His arms.
Fools cannot bear to have anyone over them, and so they ignore God or deny he exists. Some of this rebellion exists in every heart. Every sin is a kind of practical atheism – it is acting as if God were not there. That also means that belief in God must be a gift.
Bottomless stores of mercy and unbending demands for righteousness almost never go together in any human being. Our temperament inclines us one way or the other. But these are perfectly combined in God.
Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.
David shows us straightaway. He doesn’t say, “I will take refuge in God,” but rather shows that he already has, that he is already safe. How can he feel that way before he knows whether the smear campaign will be thwarted? The answer: if we trust in God’s wisdom and will, then we have peace regardless of the immediate outcome.
Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.15.
If you are filled with shame and guilt, you do not merely need to believe in the abstract concept of God’s mercy. You must sense, on the palate of the heart, as it were, the sweetness of his mercy. Then you will know you are accepted. If you are filled with worry and anxiety, you do not only need to believe that God is in control of history. You must see, with eyes of the heart, his dazzling majesty. Then you will know he has things in hand.
Repentance is not less than being sorry for individual sins, but it means much more.
Today’s outspoken believer may be tomorrow’s apostate, and today’s outspoken unbeliever may be tomorrow’s convert. We must not make settled, final decisions about anyone’s spiritual state or fate.
You have heard the phrase in “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” – “Mild, he lays his glory by.” What does that mean? He did it voluntarily, willingly, and lovingly. No one forced him. It wasn’t just a duty. He faced unimaginable pain and death out of love for you.
Common grace means that nonbelievers often act more righteously than believers despite their lack of faith; whereas believers, filled with remaining sin, often act far worse than their right belief in God would lead us to expect. All this means Christians should be humble and respectful toward those who do not share their faith.
The doctrine of common grace is the teaching that God bestows gifts of wisdom, moral insight, goodness, and beauty across humanity, regardless of race or religious belief.
Everyone gets an identity from something. Everyone must say to himself or herself, “I’m significant because of This” and “I’m acceptable because I’m welcomed by Them.” But then whatever This is and whoever They are, these things become virtual gods to us, and the deepest truths about who we are.
When you say, “I won’t serve you, God, if you don’t give me X,” then X is your true bottom line, your highest love, your real god, the thing you most trust and rest in.
If you want to understand your own behavior, you must understand that all sin against God is grounded in a refusal to believe that God is more dedicated to our good, and more aware of what that is, than we are. We distrust God because we assume he is not truly for us, that if we give him complete control, we will be miserable.
Lord, give me the wisdom to seek skillfulness, but not be taken with my own cleverness. Give me the discernment to perceive excellence, but not be enamored of pedigree and credentials.
Most of us are either temperamentally direct, bold, and persistent or gentle, calm, and deferential – but never both. Yet the wise learn to be both. They follow the one who always showed boldness without harshness, humility without uncertainty, who spoke truth but always bathed in love.
Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.
Money has the power to make you think that ruthlessness is just normal. Where have you seen the power of money to make us ruthless?