The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Philip YanceyRead
In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Interpretation
God's love is unconditional and not based on our flaws or circumstances.
This quote emphasizes the idea that divine love, as depicted in the stories told by Jesus, is all-encompassing and free from any conditions that might exclude someone from receiving it. It suggests that regardless of our imperfections or life situations, we are always considered worthy of God's love, highlighting the depth and nature of divine grace.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to inspire the congregation about God's unwavering love.
The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesusβ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.
Anxiety is the gap between now and later.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.
Ninety nine failed solutions equals a gain of 99 pieces of information.
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