Lord, I don't know if Tony is in trouble or if he's upset about his job or if he's just working out at the gym. But I pray that You would draw him closer. Help him see there's no sin so great that You aren't ready to forgive. I pray You would give him hope. I pray You would allow him to see how much You love him and want him to come back to You. And give me the ability to love him well, through whatever we face.

The Bible says, 'There is no one righteous, not even one.' So really, none of us deserves grace. But we all still want God's forgiveness.

It was one thing to believe God could forgive a sinner. It was another thing to believe that the sinner could live forgiven.

The reason he kept going was that God got hold of his heart. And he did the same for me. I'm so ashamed of what happened back there. How we let our passions run. We hurt a lot of people. And we've lived with that. But

God, I want a new job and I don't want to go to jail," Tony prayed. "But I know there are consequences to my actions. I know what I did hurt people. I've hurt my family. I hurt my employer. And I thank You for forgiving me and grabbing hold of my heart and not letting me go any further toward things that would have destroyed me.

Don't walk headfirst into sin when you know better. But when you fail, as you most surely will, let God use those failures for His glory.

On the Day of Atonement, the Levites performed the central sacrificial rites of the believing community, stewarding annual ceremonies that in graphic detail pictured the evil nature of sin and the bloody nature of divinely provided atonement for sin. The Day of Atonement was a visceral affair, filled with blood and fire and death and, at the pulsing core of it all, the realized hope of forgiveness through repentance. The people could be pure.

Demonic spirits are subject to the laws of God's Kingdom. They know full well when someone's lifestyle of sin has given them access to that person's soul. The power of the Spirit and the authority of Jesus Christ are required for someone to get free and stay free of demonic oppression. Trying to get a person delivered who refuses to forgive or who insists on holding onto a lifestyle of sin is a pointless waste of time.

Prisoners are people who have invited demonic oppression into their lives through a lifestyle of sin. The demons know they have permission to wreak havoc in these prisoners' souls until the prisoners repent. Once a prisoner has repented, the evil spirits no longer have authorization to oppress that person because the roots of sin have been dealt with.

God does not forgive excuses; He only forgives sins.

As the water of ablution, the dew falls from heaven, purifies the body, and makes it ready to receive the soul;195 in other words, it brings about the albedo, the white state of innocence

If one evil thought, if one evil word, if one evil action, deserves eternal damnation, how many hells, my friends, do every one of us deserve, whose whole lives have been one continued rebellion against God!