I've been enjoying this daily devotional that I won. Here are some of my favorite quotes so far, which I hope will be a blessing to you. :) The whole book has been good.
"We were not made to live independent, self-directed lives. We were not meant to exist according to our own little self-oriented plans, living for our own moments of glory. No, we were created to live for [H]im." - From January 1.
"Your hope of enduring is not to be found in your character or strength, but in your Lord's." - From January 12.
"For the believer, harsh, critical, impatient, and irritated responses to others are always connected to forgetting or denying who we are and what we have been given in Jesus." - Jan. 19
"Whether you have realized it or not, [H]e is what your hoping heart has been searching for, because what you've really been searching for is life, real heart-changing, heart-satisfying life--life to the fullest, life abundant. People can love and respect you, but they can't give you life." - Jan. 23
"True lasting hoping is never found horizontally. It's only ever found vertically, at the feet of the Messiah, the One who is hope." - Jan. 23
"The [O]ne who is the final definition of love, wisdom, mercy, and power makes us [H]is slaves. He who alone is able to give us life enslaves our hearts to [H]im. His absolute rulership over every area of our lives is not a deadening law but a life-giving grace. He is freeing us from our slavery to what is not true and cannot deliver." - Jan. 27
"Will you deal with life based on what you assess you bring to the table or based on who you now are as a child of the King of kings and Lord of lords---the Savior who is always with you in power and grace? Will you live in timidity and fear or in the courage of hope? Will you avoid challenges of faith in fear or move toward the, resting not in your own ability but in the presence, power, and grace of the One who rules all and has become your Father?" - Jan. 31
"We can experience peace in the face of the unknown. We can feel an inner well-being while living in the middle of mystery. Why? Because our peace of heart does not rest on how much we know, how much we have figured out, or how accurately we have been able to predict the future. No, our rest is in the [P]erson who holds our individual futures in [H]is wise and gracious hands." - Feb. 6
"We argue to ourselves and to others that what looked like sin was not sin at all. It is all a function of the delusional self-righteousness of sin. It involves daily acts of self-atonement. It is us working to convince ourselves that we really don't need the amazing grace of a faithful, loving Savior. At street level, we all tend to back away from the radical message that we all say we believe. It is a shocking denial of sin and a minimizing of the grace that is a sinner's only hope." - Feb. 7
"Corporate worship really does confront us with the fact that we are worse off than we thought and that God's grace is more amazing than we ever could have imagined. We will continue to need that reminder until our sin is no more and we are with [H]im and like [H]im forever." - Feb. 8
"Quit being paralyzed by your past. Grace offers you life in the present and a guarantee of a future." - Feb. 8
"You don't have to hide in guilt when weak faith gets you off the path, because your hope in life isn't your faithfulness, but [H]is. You can run in weakness and once again seek [H]is strength. And you can know that in zealous grace [H]e will not leave [H]is craftwork until faith fully rules your heart unchallenged." - Feb. 12
"Grace illumines our dank hallways and our dark corners. The Son of grace shines the light of [H]is grace into the darkest recesses of our hearts, not as an act of vengeance or punishment, but as a move of forgiving, transforming, and delivering grace. He dispels our self-inflicted darkness because [H]e knows that we cannot grieve what we do not see, we cannot confess what we have not grieved, and we cannot turn from what we haven't confessed.
The light has come. Run to the light; it is not to be feared. Yes, it is the light of exposure, but what will be exposed has already been covered by the blood of the One who exposes it." - Feb. 14
"He has not unleashed [H]is power in your life only to deliver to you things that quickly pass away and that have no capacity at all to satisfy your heart.
This means that often when you are tempted to think that God is loving you less because your life is hard, [H]e is actually loving you more. The hardships that you are facing are the tool of [H]is exposing, forgiving, liberating, and transforming grace. These hard moments aren't in your life because God is distant and uncaring, but rather because [H]e loves you so fully. These moments become moments of faith and not doubt when by grace you begin to value what God says is truly valuable. Do you value what God values?" - Feb. 19