I know everything about you, far more than you know of yourself. But I restrain My yearning to "fix" you, waiting instead for you to come to Me for help. Imagine the divine restraint this requires, for I have all Power in heaven and on earth. Seek My Face with a teachable spirit. Come into My Presence with thanksgiving, desiring to be transformed. Then

Francis Schaeffer's Escape from Reason.

Let My thoughts burst freely upon your consciousness, stimulating abundant Life.

Through the intimacy of our relationship, you are being transformed from the inside out. As you keep your focus on Me, I form you into the one I desire you to be. Your part is to yield to My creative work in you, neither resisting it nor trying to speed it up. Enjoy the tempo of a God-breathed life by letting Me set the pace. Hold My hand in childlike trust, and the way before you will open up step by step.

Marvel at the beauty of a life intertwined with My Presence. Rejoice as we journey together in intimate communion. Enjoy the adventure of finding yourself through losing yourself in Me.

It is not so much adverse events that make you anxious as it is your thoughts about those events. Your mind engages in efforts to take control of a situation, to bring about the result you desire.

Culture socializes us into what is considered proper behavior. For Christians, this is true in our churches as well as in society at large.

God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it.

The question we need to ask today is this, and this question strikes to the heart of how we read the Bible: Do we seek to retrieve that cultural world and those cultural expressions, or do we live the same gospel in a different way in a different day?

But the danger is obvious: those who take this approach more often than not end up denying the potency of the Sermon and sometimes simply turn elsewhere—to Galatians and Romans and Ephesians—for their Christian ethical instruction. What many such readings of the Sermon really want is Paul, and since they can't find Paul in the Sermon, they reinterpret the Sermon and give us Paul instead.

as life is a story, so also is spiritual formation a story—a journey from earth to heaven.

Romans 12—16 is lived theology, and Romans 1—11 is written to prop up that lived theology. Romans 12—16 is not the application of Paul's theology, nor is Romans a classic example of the indicative leading to the imperative. What Paul had in focus was the lack of praxis, the lack of lived theology, the lack of peace in Rome, and he wrote Romans both to urge a new kind of lived theology (12—16) and to offer a rationale (1—11) for that praxis.