More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
By calling you to die daily, the gospel welcomes you to live eternally. Contrary to popular opinion, death really is the portal to life.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
I was changing, and the whole direction of my life, my thoughts about my identity, my definition of meaning and purpose, and where I would look for my inner sense of well-being were changing as well.
It’s so easy to forget who you are in Christ and what you have been given as his child.
It’s so easy to shop horizontally for what you have already been given vertically. It’s so easy to give in to fear, to give way to shame, or to allow yourself to be weakened by guilt because you forget the present benefits of Jesus’s finished work.
if God gave you his Son, he will also give you everything else you need.
everything you are facing in the here and now.
it is impossible for you to ever be in any situation, relationship, or location by yourself.
limited resources of your own wisdom, righteousness, and strength.
It’s so easy to feel weak in the face of temptation and give way to what grace has given you the power to resist.
It’s so easy to forget who you are and look for identity elsewhere,
His church is a tool of grace, a vehicle for remembering, so that we may celebrate and grow.
Because there will always be things in your life that you do not understand.
It is only when you understand the completeness of your justification (that your penalty has been paid and you have been made eternally right with God by the life and death of Jesus) that you are able to rest in the ongoing discipline of your sanctification. That discipline is not to make you right with God, but an expression of the fact that you have been made right with God, and because you have, you are now the object of his fatherly love. You can expect his discipline, but you do not have to fear his anger. You will experience his correction, but you will never face his rejection. He
...more
But such is the paradox of grace. Death is the doorway to life. Hopelessness is the entrance to hope. Weakness is the place to find strength. Injustice is where mercy flows. Life comes to those who deserve death. Defeat is actually a victory. The end is really a beginning. Out of sorrow comes eternal celebration. The tomb is the place where new life begins.
You see, the message of the infusion of God’s grace is that you haven’t been left to your track record.
You aren’t restricted to your limited collection of personal spiritual resources. Rather, in Christ, you have been given both a new identity and new potential. How could this new potential be more radically and powerfully stated than in the apostle Paul’s words: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20)?
Don’t forget to remind yourself again today that as God’s child you simply cannot be alone, no matter what you feel.
But left to myself, I have little desire or power to say no. So you have given me exactly what I need. It’s the only thing that will solve my problem. You have given me your Spirit. So, when necessary, I am able to say no.
The future grace of eternity secures for you all the grace you will ever need in between. No, you won’t understand all that you face, and yes, God’s will will confuse you at points, but your story has been infused with meaning and purpose because it’s been included in God’s story of redemption and restoration.
Right now, Jesus is ruling over all things. That means that every situation, relationship, and location of your life is ruled by King Christ. You cannot be in a place that is not under his rule.
Everyone who has been brought into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ has also been drafted into the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You have been called to be the look on his face, the tone of his voice, and the touch of his hand. You are to represent his presence and his love. You are placed where you are to make his mercy and faithfulness visible and concrete.
Your mentality, your personality, your emotionality, your physicality, your possessions, and all your relationships belong to you from the Lord for his using.
It has always been hard for the people of God to rest in the reality of grace in motion.
Why? Because he is working in them, as he works in us, to craft them into people of robust and sturdy faith.
“May your kingdom come in all that I think, desire, and say. May your kingdom come in my marriage and in my family. May your kingdom come in my work. May your kingdom come in my leisure. May your kingdom so rule my heart that stepping over your boundaries would no longer be attractive to me.”
Real prayer is prayed in an attitude of what the Puritans called importunity, which is the condition of being troublesome or persistent because of a deep sense of urgency. It means being frightened into crying out for help. It is a condition of heart that is there only as the result of grace.
One gets up in the morning and tells himself that he’ll do better today, but the other starts the day with a plea for grace.
One has to hold on to the possibility of personal reformation, but the other has abandoned that hope and therefore runs to God for help.
What they have omitted or neglected is confession.
When you confess your sins to God, you don’t just admit that you have sinned; no, you also confess that you have no power to deliver yourself from the sin you have just confessed.
The whole story of the gospel in Scripture is a story of people who are desperately trapped in sin and have no hope except the rescuing grace of the Redeemer.
A desire for a good thing becomes a bad thing when that desire becomes a ruling thing. It’s not wrong to desire theological knowledge, personal comfort, or the respect of others, but these things must not rule our hearts. Here is another argument for the depth of our need for grace. We all still have wandering hearts. We are all still tempted to put the gift in the place that the Giver alone should occupy.
Isn’t it good that God devised a plan so that we would regularly gather and remember what the world around us ignores or mocks? As we remember, our hearts fill once again with gratitude and are moved once again to worship. We leave with a fresh knowledge that grace isn’t foolishness; no, it’s the foundation of our hope.
Most of us think of ourselves as needy in some way, and most of us worry that our needs will never be met.
So your obedience is never a fearful payment, but a hymn of gratitude to a God who met you where you were and did for you what you could not have done for yourself.
So we need grace to see again, to tremble again, and to bow down again at the feet of the One who deserves our awe.
When your heart is ruled by envy, the attitude of “I am blessed” gets replaced with the attitude of “I deserve.”
When you begin to question God’s goodness, you quit going to him for help. Why? Because you don’t seek the help of someone you’ve come to doubt.
The only solution to envy is God’s rescuing grace—grace that turns self-centered sinners into joyful and contented worshipers of God.
Not only are we too easily satisfied, willing to stop before the Redeemer’s work is fully accomplished in us, we are all very easily distracted. We get distracted by the temporary glories of the created world, and we actually begin to think that we can find our satisfaction there.
While he, in glorious dissatisfaction, still works to redeem us from us, we are out chasing other lovers. We begin to believe that they can do for us what he alone can do. We begin to invest our time, energy, and hope in things that can never deliver.
He will complete his work even in those moments when we don’t care that he does.
We are all still in possession of wandering hearts.
It is humbling, but it is important to remember that it is only ever the sin inside us that hooks us to the sin outside of us.
You don’t need to search for meaning and purpose. You don’t need to search for identity. You don’t need to look for something to give you the inner sense of well-being that every person wants. You don’t have to wonder if you’ll ever be loved. You don’t have to worry that your life and work will result in nothing. You don’t have to wonder if you’ll have what you need to face what will be on your plate today. You don’t have to worry about your future. You will never be left to the limited range of your own resources. You will never, ever be left alone.
Rest in your identity as his child. Rest in his eternal love. Rest in his powerful grace. Rest in his constant presence and faithful provision. Rest in his patience and forgiveness. Rest.
Don’t let yourself doubt God’s presence and his goodness. Don’t let yourself wonder if you’ll make it through.
So if you are willing to say, “God, show me my heart,” and willing to speak these words, “Please forgive me,” you know that you have been showered with amazing grace—grace that has already changed your heart and grace that promises more change to come.
