grace

The moments you are given are your true wealth. You don't need power, influence, or fame. The sunlight brings the power; the wind carries the influence. And as for fame, well, when you allow yourself to notice all those hands that have made your growth possible, you will also recognize what you have made possible for countless others _ and how famous you already are. In this very moment, one of those others may be telling a story about how you helped them grow forward.

We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

Unconditional love is not affirming another in every decision they make especially when those choices are unhealthy. Unconditional love will risk offending in the name of genuine concern. It will risk relationship for the ultimate well-being of the other. To indiscriminately affirm the unhealthy choices of others is not love at all but perhaps the worst kind of fraud.

I'm never one, distinct color but a dichotomy of dark and bright. The hues follow me, reflecting my mood, displaying every tone and shade I feel. I can breathe in red and exhale blue, or swim in green and dry as a rainbow. It all depends on how I choose to react to every shadow and light beam headed my way.

...it is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)

And she's like, you know, the 'Grace' in U2's song, the one that 'carries the world on her hips'._ - Diana Rigsby, M.D. Ph.D.

There are many things evil people can take from you. However, they can never steal your ability to laugh and laugh loud.

The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.

What is ordinary to you maybe a desert of woeful newness to another.

If God were willing to sell His grace, we would accept it more quickly and gladly than when He offers it for nothing.

Your life has a natural motion. Surrendering reveals how flowing this life could be.

Grace knocks us flat, preventing any form of self-congratulation. All the good we achieve is to be attributed to God rather than to ourselves. What makes our lives good is not anything we are ourselves but the presence within us of what we are not, a divine presence never ours by right because never ours by nature. All the glory for the good we exhibit in our lives should therefore be reserved for God.

The Spirit of God draws or leads the sinner from one phase to another, gradually, in proportion as one is found having a disposition to responsive hearing. Grace flows ordinarily from prevenient grace through the grace of baptism through the grace of justification toward sanctifying grace leading toward consummation in glory. The power by which one cooperates with grace is grace itself. In this way God draws all to himself, eliciting a hunger for righteousness and a desire for truth.

All of my secrets and scars and wishes and dreams can live together in this one body without shame, without blame, and without fear. I am all loved, all accepted, and all in service to God. In his eyes, regardless of what I did or didn__ do today, I am loved. I am His, so I am enough.

I am relentlessly determine to be occupied with Jesus Christ and His Glorious Gospel and nothing else.

When you can cross the highwire without falling off, you are in a state of perfect balance, perfect grace. It is the same with obedience. When you submit, submit totally, you enter that same equilibrium, surrender and grace. This is the meaning of erotic.

To the degree that God gives us the grace to see Him, our lives and our ministries will become fruitful and effective.

If we ask God for a calm, thankful heart that sees all the blessings His grace imparts, He can teach us many lessons in illness that can never be learned in health.