You are most humble and gentle when you think that the person you are ministering to is more like you than unlike you. When you have inserted yourself into another category that tends to make you think you have arrived, it is very easy to be judgmental and impatient.

Weakness is not the problem, but my delusion of my strengths is.

If my heart is ever going to be freed of grumbling and ruled by gratitude, I need your grace: grace to remember, grace to see, grace that produces a heart of humble joy.

You'll never celebrate grace as much as you should when you think you're more righteous than you actually are.

Adam and Eve weren't just after God's forbidden fruit; they were after God's position.

This is what sin does to us all. At a deep and often unnoticed level, sin replaces worship of God with worship of self. It replaces submission with self-rule. It replaces gratitude with demands for more. It replaces faith with self-reliance. It replaces vertical joy with horizontal envy. It replaces a rest in God's sovereignty with a quest for personal control. We live for our glory. We set up our rules. We ask others to serve our agenda.

fact is that no one gives grace better than someone who is convinced that he needs it, as well.

It is dangerous to live without your heart being captured by awe of God, because awe of God is quickly replaced by awe of you.

If you put yourself in the center of your world, you will find plenty of things to complain about.

The myriad of dysfunctions of the human community can be traced to this one thing: awe. When we replace vertical awe of God with awe of self, bad things happen in the horizontal community.

Good parenting lives at the intersection of a humble admission of personal powerlessness and a confident rest in the power and grace of God.

Self-righteousness crushes prayer, reducing it to an empty religious recitation spoken by one who sees himself as a grace graduate. Run to Jesus in your poverty and weakness, and know that he is never revolted when you do, but always greets you with arms of grace.