Salvation and Christ's love is a gift. You don't earn it. You've got to receive that gift.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes.

The more diverse the people groups who forsake their gods to receive the grace of the true God and follow Christ, the more visible is the superior beauty and power of Christ over all his competitors.

If they had more grace to hear, they would receive more that the writer has to give. But they are becoming hard and dull, and in danger of throwing away the little they have.

There is absolutely no power in our human effort to live holy. It is only by His grace. And the result of receiving grace is we get better at living like Christ, which is something we all want, right?

The great evangelist Dwight Moody once said, "When I was a young Christian, I thought that God kept His gifts on shelves and the best gifts were on the highest shelves and I would have to reach up. I learned later the best gifts are on the lowest shelf and I had to stoop down."

We are all sinners and are on an equal plane with one another. So we cannot exercise grace as God does, but we can relate to one another as those who have received grace and who wish to operate on the principles of grace.

So "come, let us worship" (Psalm 95:6) the one, true God who has ordained the Spiritual Discipline of worshiping Him—in public, in the family, and in private—as one of the most bountiful means of receiving the grace to grow in Christlikeness. For as we grow in the worship of God, we grow in the likeness of Christ.

I have since learned that the most mature believer is the one who is bent over, leaning most heavily on the Lord, and admitting his total inability to do anything without Christ. The greatest Christian is not the one who has achieved the most but rather the one who has received the most.

just realized that there is nothing fair about grace or about love. As soon as your soul feels its worth, all you can do is receive grace and love as a gift. A very good gift.

Bread of Life? Jesus lived up to the title. But an unopened loaf does a person no good. Have you received the bread? Have you received God's forgiveness?

Lord, forgive me. You said go to her, and I let pride stand in my way. You said she needed me, and I didn't believe. You said love her, and I thought it would be easy. Help me. Open my heart and mind so that I will love her as you have loved me.