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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Dave Harvey
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April 2 - June 25, 2025
Right inside your own heart, you are in a battle.
Becoming citizens of the kingdom of light guarantees our ultimate destination. Yet, between now and then, sin can turn our hearts into a pretty effective fog machine.
sin is crafty, it is alluring, and it is treacherous.
sin wants to separate us from God himself.
sin would have us think of ourselves as victimized by God.
We stand forgiven in God’s court because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ—God
we are welcomed as righteous in God’s house because of the imputed righteousness of Christ!
No matter how intense your battle with sin may rage, you fight as a forgiven sinner.
God always wins in the end!
Our enemy is the desires of our flesh that oppose the desires of the Spirit.
Each day is a day of new mercy and power to confess, love, forgive, and restore.
no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to really avoid the war with sin this side of heaven.
the end of war is meant to be peace.
God’s grace at work in us compels us to not just sit behind the steering wheel, but put what we know into gear.
It’s the life and decisions of someone rightly related to God.
True humility is living confident in Christ’s righteousness, and suspicious of our own.
As the worst of sinners, in the day-to-day conflicts of marriage, I should be primarily suspicious and regularly suspicious of myself!
that my heart has a central role in my behavior, and that my heart has a permanent tendency to oppose God and his ways.
to live suspicious of your heart’s motivations, that’s safe spiritual driving.
the ability to claim righteousness apart from Christ undermines the truth of the gospel.
“Our best works are shot through with sin and contain something for which we need to be forgiven.”
I need to slow down, exercise the humility of self-suspicion, and inspect my own heart first.
it lacks integrity to ignore a major problem to deal with something trivial, simply because that’s where you prefer to focus.
He’s calling for the inspection to begin with me.
suspect and inspect the accuracy of your perceptions.
Beware the off-ramp of pride.
your objectivity is itself tainted by sin.
Who are you intending to serve—your spouse or yourself?
Circumstances Only Reveal Existing Sin
Though honesty is essential in marriage, we must be able to build trust and resolve offenses.
To try to justify ourselves is to deny our guilt before God.
The heat (the circumstances) did not fill the engine with oil, it simply revealed what was in the engine.
Christ didn’t respond sinfully to the circumstances in his life—even an undeserved, humiliating, torturous death—because the engine of his heart was pure.
Often a spouse plays his or her part by raising the engine temperature and heating the oil. But if we’re wisely honest we will realize that God is behind it all, revealing the familiar sin so that it might be overcome by amazing grace.
Focus on Undeserved Grace, Not Unmet Needs
If my desire is so strong that I am tempted to sin, then the problem is entirely me.
Lurking beneath our unmet needs are desires demanding satisfaction.
It was a desire masquerading as a need—something I wanted tricked out as something I had to have.
Needs are not wrong; we all have them. They exist as daily reminders that we were created as dependent beings, in fundamental need of God and his provision for our lives.
even things that are good for a marriage can be corrupted if they are defined as needs.
A needs-based marriage does not testify to God’s glory; it is focused on personal demands competing for supremacy.
God’s mercy means his kindness, patience, and forgiveness toward us. It is his compassionate willingness to suffer for and with sinners for their ultimate good.
mercy weds the severe obligation of justice with the warmth of personal relationship. Mercy explains how a holy and loving God can relate to sinners without compromising who he is.
Mercy sweetens marriage.
Mercy sweetens the bitterness out of relationships—especially marriage.
Marriage is a place where two sinners become so connected that all the masks come off.
Without mercy, differences become divisive, sometimes even “irreconcilable.”
The Father offered mercy to us so that we might share it.
Mercy doesn’t change the need to speak truth. It transforms our motivation from a desire to win battles to a desire to represent Christ. It takes me out of the center and puts Christ in the center.
when you know how to deal with committed enemies, you’ll know how to deal with occasional enemies. When you can extend mercy to the spiteful, violent, selfish, and wicked, you can extend it to those who annoy, ignore, or disappoint you.”
