God's love is not a pampering love. God's love is a perfecting love. God does not get up every day trying to figure how He can plant a bigger smile on your face. God is in the process of growing us and changing us. His love is a transforming love.

In counseling, we don't simply help people to change one thought; we help people to understand the pattern of their thinking — their mindsets.

Who we are is not a question we can ask without seeking to understand the context in which we live. Biblical counselors seek to understand the influences that shape the responses of the human heart.

For life change to happen, we must commit to full cooperation with God's desire to transform us.

Wake up, dude! It's not about who you are. It's all about who God is.

If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and growing to be more like Christ should be the purpose of the small group ministry.

If God is not changing you, you have to honestly ask, "Have I ever really converted?" To put it another way, "If your faith isn't changing you, it hasn't saved you." The people who really have the new birth—the people who really have that conversion experience—are changing.

The secular church is one dominated by the world, as much of the contemporary church is. It is characterized by the world's wisdom, the world's theology, the world's agenda, and the world's methods. The evangelical church, when it is secular, is one that seeks to do God's work but in the world's way. It looks to the media and money rather than to God and His power, which is unleashed through prayer.

Contrast, as a result of that study, blessed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we will begin to take on something of the glorious luster of the Lord Jesus Christ and will become increasingly like him.

So the verse means, "Do not let the age in which you live force you into its scheme of thinking and behaving."

Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself-that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary-it is inherently evil.

One does not cross over from Manichaeism to Christianity, or from Lamarckianism to Darwinism, by a mere adjustment of views. True conversions consist in the choice of a new audience, that is, of a new world. All that was once familiar is now seen in startlingly new ways.