Most people don’t even try to learn the ways of the kingdom; they just go about their days with a practical agnosticism, hoping things work out, tossing up prayers like they hope to score on a Jesus lottery ticket.
To lose hope has the same effect on our heart as it would be to stop breathing.
Pause when you are offered beauty and make the conscious decision, I receive this grace. We open our clenched soul to let it in. To find God in it. I will often pray, Thank you for this beauty. I receive it into my soul. And with it I receive you, in it, by it, through it – your love, your goodness, your life.
Honestly, I think most people live their daily lives along a spectrum from slightly rattled to completely fried.
Pray for people who are in a better situation than you are, who are more gifted than you are, or who currently have wonderful circumstances coming their way. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Pray for someone else’s promotion, someone else’s pregnancy, someone else’s healing. That crucifies envy.
Second, we chose to believe Christ is already within us, and we remind ourselves of this marvel. The springs of life well up from within.
After I finish a phone call and before I start something else, I simply pause. When I pull into work in the morning and when I pull into my driveway in the evening, I pause.
No other act will bring you a greater measure of God than loving him, actively engaging your heart and soul in loving him.
Envy first brings depression: “My life isn’t as good as yours.” Then comes offense: “Why should you have what I don’t have?” Which degrades into hatred.
The best way to get there is to think upon the things we love and remind ourselves, “This is from God; this is his true heart.
You must guard your heart with everything you’ve got, especially in times of disappointment and pain. Your secret weapon against the enemy’s hatred is to love God right then and there, in the midst of the sorrow, whatever it may be.
Beauty is one of the richest graces God has provided to heal our souls and absorb his goodness.
My soul just can’t do life at the speed of smartphones. But I was asking it to; everybody’s asking theirs to.
To make room for God to fill the vessel of our soul, we have to begin moving out some of the unnecessary clutter that continually accumulates there like the junk drawer in your kitchen.
I’ve been part of some extraordinary experiences with God. I’ve had global adventures with him. But I don’t live there. Getting there, just like getting to love or anything else that’s wonderful in this life, is in the dailies.
You will not think clearly about your life until you think mythically. Until you see with the eyes of your heart.
Yes, a man is a dangerous thing. So is a scalpel. It can wound or it can save your life. You don’t make it safe by making it dull; you put it in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing.
Salvation is a process, not an event.
When it comes to the moral question, it is not simply whether we say yes or no to desire, but always what we do with desire. Christianity recognizes that we have desire gone mad within us. But it does not seek to rectify the problem by killing desire; rather, it seeks the healing of desire, just as it seeks the healing of every other part of our human being.
As C. S. Lewis wrote, “A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”2 This is where our sin and our culture have come together to keep us in bondage and brokenness, to prevent the healing of our wounds.
I renounce every limit I have ever placed on Jesus. I renounce every limit I have placed on him in my life. I break all limitations, renounce them, revoke them. Jesus, forgive me for restraining you in my life.