It requires powerful mercy for me to become a person who surrenders self-appointed authority to the authority of God.

Faith means you take God at his word, you never let yourself think that you're smarter than him, and you live inside his boundaries.

Awelessness that leads me to question God's power and character will cause me to take my life into my own hands, and because I have taken my life into my own hands, I will rebel against what God calls me to

If you believe in God and his control over everything that exists, then you have to accept that all of your grumbling is ultimately grumbling against him.

You can't keep the second Great Commandment unless you are first keeping the first. Only in bowing before God and submitting to his desires can we really turn to one another in peace and love. Any agenda for change that forgets this vertical causality will prove temporary and cosmetic.

Only powerful, rescuing grace can take you from "Let me do what I want to do" to "Guard me against the temptation to do what you know is best for me not to do.

If you are God's child, you're either giving in to sin or giving way to the operation of rescuing grace, but your heart's never neutral.

True Christianity is always a matter of the submission of the heart to God, something that only rescuing grace can produce.

He placed himself under broken and unjust human rule in order to liberate us from self-rule and transform us into people who celebrate and willingly submit to his rule.

Here it is. When the enemy somehow tricks you into squeezing the size of your life to the size of your personal dreams, wants, and needs, he has got you right where he wants you.

it is true of every believer and that we live in a daily state of spiritual war and must therefore live with eyes open, heart engaged, mind alert, and protective gear in place

It contradicts our normal thinking, but the doorway to freedom is submission. When I acknowledge that I am a danger to myself and submit to the authority, wisdom, and grace of God, I am not killing any hope I have for freedom. The opposite is true.