Our purpose (in relationship) is to get what we want but God's purpose is to give us what we really need. We think things are going well only if we are getting along with others. But God says that it is also when we are not getting along with others that he is accomplishing his purpose. God has designed our relationship to function as both a diagnosis and a cure.

What will you reach for to give you hope, courage, and a reason to continue?

The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to scue me from myself.

Yes, your life is messy and hard, but that's not a failure of the plan; it is the plan. It's God working to complete what he's begun in you.

God decided to leave you in this fallen world to live, love, and work, because he intended to use the difficulties you face to do something in you that couldn't be done any other way.

Psalm 27 tells that even in the middle of difficulties that we do not understand nor seem able to escape, we have reason to take heart and have hope.

you never just suffer the thing that you're suffering, but you always also suffer the way that you're suffering that thing.

Our blessings are never payment for the good we've done, and our trials are never punishment for the wrongs we've done. This cause-and-effect equation is always bad spiritual math.

God has chosen to let you live in this fallen world because he plans to employ the difficulties of it to continue and complete his work in you.

Joyful, perseverant obedience only ever grows in the soil of worship.

Suffering has the power to expose what you have been trusting all along. If you lose your hope when your physical body fails, maybe your hope wasn't really in your Savior after all. It was humbling to confess that what I thought was faith was actually self-reliance

When you are suffering, you have to force yourself to pay attention to your private conversation, that is, the words you say to yourself that no one else hears.