Status Updates From Maturity: Growing Up and Go...

Gifts, character, desire, and willingness to be the servant of others are keys to ministry in the church-and in any healthy church these will be noticed.

Only in the light of Calvary will we, with Paul, discover how the mystery of our suffering can be transformed into a ministry. We do not yet fully understand all of the details. But we know that Christ’s greater suffering makes sense of our lesser suffering. We know too that it is in fellowship with that Great Sufferer that our own experience of suffering will lead us to Christian maturity and fruitfulness.

As God is for us, who can be against us?

The invisible hand of God directs everything in history, including our personal history to do us eternal good.

God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for our salvation. Thus, God will not withhold anything from us that is for our own good.

Jesus Christ was made just like us in every way, yet without sin. He sympathises with our weakness and he knows our frame.

Every season of suffering in Joseph's life proved to be a necessary stepping-stone in God's purpose.

Duty—simple obedience to the commandments of God, daily conformity to his will—is one of our most important safeguards. Failure to be about our duties inevitably exposes us to greater temptations while it also weakens our resistance to them.

God tests us to prove his work in us, Satan tempts us in order to destroy that work. If God permits this, it is in order to expose the sin in our hearts to us, and to draw us closer to himself in forgiveness and cleansing, or to give us the strength to overcome.

Nothing can separate the love of Christ for us.

No one can condemn God’s children. There is only one who condemns, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took our punishment upon himself.

People who do anything wholeheartedly usually experience a satisfaction in their activity that is unknown to the halfhearted, whether it be in the sphere of work, or play, or human relationships.

Only sinners see their need for salvation and therefore seek it. Only those who sense the depth and twisted-ness of sin will develop deep desires for holiness. Until we realize how great the weight of sin is, we will not make much progress in pursuing the holiness without which we will never see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

If we do not see how serious sin is we will never see how wonderful the work of Christ is.