Jesus is not a vending machine that dispenses what we want to feel good about ourselves. He is the Holy One who comes to cleanse us, fill us, and change us. He does not do this according to our agendas. He will not serve our wayward needs. He loves us too much to merely make us happy. He comes to make us holy. There will be many occasions when he will not give us what we think we need, but rather, he will give us what he knows we need.

Look at your life through the eyes of your Redeemer. Let him reveal your behavior and your heart as well. The courage of self-examination leads to the hope of lasting personal change when God is involved. Emmanuel has entered your story and nothing will ever be the same again!

The gospel gap in many of our lives doesn't stay empty either. If we do not live with a gospel-shaped, Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that hole will get filled with other things. These things may seem plausible and even biblical, but they will be missing the identity-provision-process core that is meant to fill every believer.

the reality our imagination embraces is the reality we will live by. If we are not captured by the truth of living in a deeply personal relationship with God, we will shrink our expectations and dreams down to the size of our own selfish wants, desires, and strategies.

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself. When

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.

Real change does not take place until it is visible in our lives and our relationships.

The hope of the gospel invites us to a holy dissatisfaction with all of our relationships, even—especially—those with few major problems.

They have all faced the difficulty of having relationships with flawed people in a broken world, and they have opted to check out.

When I was a teenager in Georgia I always felt like the odd one. I never felt like I fit in.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.