Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again.

Lord, please crush my heart with the guilt of my sin so that you may fill it once again with the glory of your redeeming grace.

need grace, and when you forget how much you need grace, you quit seeking the rescue and strength that only grace can give.

Third, the "correcting" to be done is not a matter of "straightening them out." It is not a matter of hammering on their wrongness and on what is going to happen to them if they don't change their ways. It is a matter of restoration.

If you're dealing with some ancient ruins, He was there when they crumbled. He knows every detail. He knows exactly how you've been affected, and His expertise is reconstruction. After all, Christ was a carpenter by trade. Nothing has ever been allowed to crumble in a Christian's life or heritage that God cannot reconstruct and use.

Before the work of grace the heart is 'stony.' It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.

Therefore, so long as we live in this fallen world, we are simul iustus et peccator (saint and sinner simultaneously), until the destruction of the old Adam is completed as God makes all things new (Rev. 21:5; Isa. 42:9; 43:19; Gal. 6:15).

If you've been full of error and defeat, be done with it. Say, "By God's grace, I'm done with it," and take charge of yourself like never before."

To become a Christian and to be adopted into God's family with the new name of "Christian" does not erase the past. God does not give us amnesia or do emergency emotional/spiritual reconstructive surgery. God does forgive the past, but he does not erase it. We are given a new start, but we still come in as babies drinking milk and are expected to die daily to the parts of our lives that do not honor God and follow Jesus.

When the Lord Jesus Christ gives a man remission of sins, He also gives him repentance.