Midlife doesn't introduce you to a new you; it forces you to admit who you have been all along.

When amazing realities of the gospel quit commanding your attention, your awe, and your worship, other things in your life will capture your attention instead.

Change begins at the level of the heart.

What do I really want in life: the success of God's agenda of grace or the fulfillment of my catalog of desires?

Prayer always forsakes the kingdom of self for the kingdom of God,

the struggle of midlife is fundamentally rooted in the idolatries of the heart.

It takes God's rescuing hand for me to forsake the purpose of my kingdom and take up the purpose of his.

Without knowing it, we put our identity and inner peace in the hands of the people around us. We look to them for what no flawed human being will ever be able to deliver. We ride the roller coaster of their views of us. We begin to do things not because they are right, but because we know they will please those whose opinion of us and acceptance of us mean more than they should.

We must always, always, remember that the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed

Something as normal as a concern over what others think of me, or what will happen to me if others oppose me, rises to a level of such immediate importance that my actions are more shaped by that concern than they are about the huge and transcendent glories of the life-altering grace of the gospel.

You see, culture isn't the problem, people are.

the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed life.