The nearest anyone can come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself.

There is hope of freedom because of what Christ has done. Now you have an option. But you do have to stop presenting yourself over to sin as best you can. Your choices matter. You need to renounce the ways you have presented yourself to sin, and represent yourself to Christ.

Restored in you, to be renewed in you, to receive from you.

This is why, if you want to get to know someone, you need to know their story. Their life is a story. It, too, has a past and a future. It, too, unfolds in a series of scenes over the course of time.

What you must cling to is that you have died with Christ in the cross; sin no longer has to rule over you. You have a choice!

The secret of Christianity is something else altogether—the life of Christ in you. Allowing his life to become your life. His revolution is not self-transformation, but his transformation of you, from the inside out, as you receive his life and allow him to live through you. Vine, branch. Anything else is madness.

Don't let your experience of God up to this point limit what you might enjoy with him in the coming years.

Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.

I'll feel my heaven anew

If you cling to an experience that cannot accommodate change, this can cause you to become a victim of that change. He who worships the past will remain there.

The past is over and done and cannot be changed. This is the only moment we can experience.

It is foolish to try to live on past experience. It is very dangerous, if not a fatal habit, to judge ourselves to be safe because of something that we felt or did twenty years ago.