Of course things might have gone roughly in the past, but the past is over and cannot touch you unless you hold on to it. Right now, in this moment, the universe is responding not to your past but to the truth of who you are, always were, and always will be.

you keep trying all your old tricks, the ones that never did work but that you keep thinking might work this time. Once you've had enough and you can't do it

The universe provides us with a clean slate in every moment; God's creation holds nothing against us.

Eastern religions tell us that if we go for God, all that is not authentically ourselves will drop.

Yet being with that dissonance is important; it is our soul work. The purpose of our lives is to close the gap between what could be and what too often is.

we are punished by our sins, not for them. Your mistakes, no matter how bad you might think they were, did not emanate from your self as He created you. Thats why remembering who you truly are is the key to deliverance from the flames of self condemnation.

There's a profound satisfaction in finally giving up something meaningless, for no other reason than that we did it to the max and now we're ready to move on.

Naming it, surrendering it to God, and asking Him to remove it—that's the miracle of personal transformation

The gospel costs nothing. We cannot buy it or earn it. It can only be received as a free gift, compliments of God's grace. So it costs nothing, but it demands everything. And that is where most of us get stuck — spiritual no-man's-land. We're too Christian to enjoy sin and too sinful to enjoy Christ. We've got just enough Jesus to be informed, but not enough to be transformed.

Half of learning is learning. The other half of learning is unlearning.

John Newton, "I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.

The absolute worst place to begin constructing an identity is you, which is precisely where most counseling begins. The absolute best place to begin constructing an identity is Jesus Christ, which is precisely where Scripture begins. Knowing Jesus and being saved by him in faith is the key to your identity and the defeat of your idolatry. It's not about you. It's all about Jesus.