The church is a community of unfinished people living in a broken world and still in need of God's forgiving and transforming grace. The church isn't meant, for either leaders or those being led, to be comfortable; it's meant to be personally transformational.

God didn't give us his grace in order to make our little claustrophobic kingdoms of one work, but to invite us to a much, much better kingdom.

There is grace for our fickle and easily distracted hearts.

need grace, and when you forget how much you need grace, you quit seeking the rescue and strength that only grace can give.

Paul is saying that we do the right that we do because grace is at that moment rescuing us from ourselves. Grace is protecting us from the self-righteousness and self-sovereignty that would make us all too independent and all too rebellious. Every moment of our obedience is an evidence of and a celebration of the grace that not only forgives but rescues, and not only rescues but transforms. We live in God's sight not in our own strength, but only by grace.

For sin, forgiveness; for weakness, strength; for foolishness, wisdom; for bondage, deliverance—such is the way of the grace of Jesus.

Get up and face life with courage because, as God's child, you have not been left to the limits of your own strength and wisdom.

When you begin to understand what you have been given in his right here, right now grace, you quit asking people, places, and things to be your savior. Because you know what he thinks of you, you are free to worry less about what the person next to you thinks. That's a freedom many of us could use!

Sin has driven us out of the garden, but grace drives us right into the Father's arms.

You and I need to say it to ourselves again and again. We need to look in the mirror and make the confession as part of our morning routine. Here's what we all need to say: "I am not a grace graduate.

You can face your weakness with joy because you know that you have been given grace for that weakness; grace that is not a thing, but a person—the Holy Spirit, who makes you the place where he dwells in power.

So look backward and look forward. God's grace enables you to do both, celebrating forgiveness for the past and embracing power for a new and better future. Only God's grace gifts you with peace with your past and hope for your future.