make it eucatastrophic

[Suffering] teaches you not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s Word is, wisdom beyond all wisdom.

He’s not asking you to never grieve again. He’s not asking you to never feel sorrow again; but you can feel sorrow and not feel hopeless and separate from the Father.

Anything that tells you not to come to Me is a lie.

When that pernicious wound pops up yet again in your heart, pay attention: God wants to heal you on an even deeper level than last time. We sometimes think that one encounter with God’s love will heal us completely. But our wounds run deeper than we know, and God is patient.

This must be why Paul emphatically exhorts us to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2, MEV). May I give you one final definition? It’s the word “renewing.” It means to “resume after an interruption.” In other words, Paul says it’s crucial that we get our minds back to the place before Satan interrupted it with his stinkin’ thinkin’.

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from.

Therefore, the “fear of man” must refer to a view of people (or a particular person or group of people) that causes you to elevate their importance, to hold them in awe, to crave their approval and to fear their disapproval. It is a situation in which your desire for their blessing amounts to adoration and worship, and in which you give some form of human approval the rights and power over your heart that only God should have.

Here is the simple truth about people: Love the ones you want to keep.

Elevating cultural propriety to the level of spiritual virtue leads Christians to a slavish emphasis on being culturally “nice” and “proper”, as well as promoting intolerant and prejudiced attitudes.

Elevating cultural propriety to the level of spiritual virtue leads Christians to a slavish emphasis on being culturally “nice” and “proper”, as well as promoting intolerant and prejudiced attitudes.