Making peace with my past was the first step; being grateful for it was the second. Now, at last, I can appreciate the woman those experiences created: me.

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.

I no longer need to carry the burden of the past on my shoulders, so I am free to fully give myself to what God has called me to in the here and now.

How many believers really live a lifestyle that results from believing that God has graced them to be not just recipients of the work of his kingdom but instruments of the work of the kingdom as well? When you believe this, you live with a constant ministry mentality that results in an everyday ministry lifestyle.

God is not willing for this broken-down world to stay in its sorry condition. As Creator, he is able to look at it and see promise, the promise of a total restoration of its beauty. And he has asked you to move in with him to be one of his tools of restoration. While it is hard to live in a house that needs to be restored in some ways it is even harder to live there while the restoration takes place.

Our deepest problem is that we seek to find our identity outside the story of redemption.

Human beings are always assigning to themselves some kind of identity. There are only two places to look. Either you will be getting your identity vertically, from who you are in Christ, or you will be shopping for it horizontally in the situations, experiences, and relationships of your daily life. This

Either you will be getting your identity vertically, from who you are in Christ, or you will be shopping for it horizontally in the situations, experiences, and relationships of your daily life.

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness, and sanctification center, where flawed people place their trust in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he has designed.

Since sin means that you are a bigger danger to you than anything else in your life and since it is impossible for you to run from you, there is only one hope for you. It is that someone with power, wisdom, and mercy will invade your life, forgive your sins, and progressively deliver you from the hold that sin has had on you. That mercy comes to you in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and his mercy is always fresh, uniquely fashioned for the sin struggles of this new day.

Change begins at the level of the heart.

Since sin is deeper than bad behavior, trying to do better isn't a solution. Only grace that changes the heart can rescue us.