God is perfection. Nothing we can ever do would be good enough to satisfy God's perfection. Only Jesus, the Perfect One, is good enough. Nothing but our faith in Him makes us acceptable to God.

You must realize that you can never deserve God's blessings—you can never be worthy of them. You can only humbly accept and appreciate them, and be in awe of how good He is and how much He loves you.

Obviously these people are destined to be frustrated and discontented most of the time. Don't spend your life trying to make the impossible possible. People have faults and there is no way around it! No matter who you are in relationship with there will be times when they will disappoint you, so plan on forgiving frequently.

Man's thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins. God's thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. God's purpose for redemption is glory, glory, glory.

This is God's holiness and justice revealed in Jesus Christ: that God justifies, accepts, and loves sinners despite their unworthiness.

Because of the fall of Adam and Eve and the natural sinfulness of the human heart that was passed onto all of us, there are those who will oppose God with all their strength. Paul was one of them. It was on his way to persecute believers in Jesus Christ that Jesus knocked him off his horse, blinded him, and spoke directly to him: "Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4). Never, never, never give up on the person in your life who seems most opposed to the gospel.

The enemy has always had a great way of trying to keep each of us tied to past sin, weighing us down with sorrow or pain and regret. Feeling heavy under the weight of knowing you made stupid mistakes will, if you allow it, cripple you for life. We have all fallen short. There is no one on earth who has not made mistakes. But walking in the miracle of forgiveness gives God much glory. The

God gives blessings to all without regard to their behavior. Terrible things happen to wonderful people. Wonderful things happen to awful people. We cannot look around the world we live in and build a case that sinners are punished and righteous people are blessed. Reality simply does not bear this out.

The great crisis of this seventh age is that there has been a second fall. The first fall led to God's expulsion of human beings from the Garden of Eden. The second fall was when we returned the favor.

The real response to the problem of human sin must always be that I cannot do anything to erase it.

Our view of human problems determines who is qualified to speak to them. If sin is the primary human problem, then those with the theological and practical expertise in dealing with sin — in its varied and complex forms — should lead the way in the field of people-helping. Unless we have an accurate and robust conception of sin, the church will concede much of its work to outside professional and will be ill-equipped to cooperate with them when needed.

The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ.