Quotes about Transformation

9In the same way I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born," says the LORD.

The path to the palace wasn't quick; it wasn't painless, but wouldn't you say that God took this mess and made it into something good? And wouldn't you think he can do the same with yours? Tally up the pain of your past. Betrayals plus anger plus tragedies. Poorly parented? Wrongly accused? Inappropriately touched? Oh, how onerous life can be.

Words are powerful. If you've been on the other end of stinging criticism, you know what I mean. Will one positive remark transform your family? Probably not. But keep it up. No one can resist the power of encouragement.

God's grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. From insecure to God secure. From regret-riddled to better-because-of-it. From afraid-to-die to ready-to-fly. Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off.1

On the Anvil

We would be wrong to think this change happens overnight. But we would be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all.

3This is what the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: Change your lives and do what is right!

We look at the Nike star player with the million-dollar smile and say, "I want to be like him." God points to His Son—who suffered the cross to save you—and says, "I want you to be like Him.

CHAPTER 2: THE GRACE-SHAPED LIFE 1. Jim Reimann, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2001), 16. 2. Ibid., 29—31.

GOD LOVES YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, BUT HE REFUSES TO LEAVE YOU THAT WAY.

Our lives are a little like a milkshake. Ingredients get mixed together. Some of the ingredients are unimpressive by themselves. Some—rejections, disappointments, failures—are awful at the time. Yet God shakes them up and pours them out into a concoction that is delicious and good.

Guilt sucks the life out of our souls. Grace restores it.