Few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain. And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life: Try harder; feel worse.

O merciful God, come to me in this place, this very place in my heart. I give this to you. I choose you over Eve. I choose your love and friendship and beauty. I give my aching and longing and vulnerable heart to you. Come, and heal me here. Sanctify me. Make me whole and holy in this very place.

We interpret Jesus through our brokenness. A painful truth, but also a hopeful truth. Maybe we can open up the doors and windows we didn't know we closed.

Do not pray for easy lives my friends, pray to be stronger man!

I mean, they are just as susceptible to pressure and in many ways more susceptible to pressure because they are desperately anxious, this is their tremendous chance to break through the rather narrow lives they may lead.

O God, Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat Is So Small

O wisdom of the world! and strength of the world! what are you when matched beside the foolishness and the weakness of the Christian? You are great in resources, manifold in methods, hopeful in prospects; but one thing you have not—and that is peace.

I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became 640 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame.

To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering.

Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we don't live in a perfect world.

We don't have to do it any better than we can - ever. Do our best for the moment, then let it go. If we have to redo it, we can do our best in another moment, later.

One of the most critical reasons believers experience defeat is because we categorize only a few areas of our lives as Christ's arena.