The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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Jesus is many things. He’s an example. He’s a teacher. He’s a great thinker and philosopher. But He’s also so much more, and He’s one thing above all else: He is Jesus, Savior.
Like her Lord, the Church has dirt under her nails, the smell of coffin wood on her clothes, and a hunger in her belly.
He reminds them how his love is truly marvelous and unconditional, but then, he looks them in the eyes, and says they ought to do better because of his love.
Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?
There’s some wild and untamed prayers in the psalms. But they’re fenced in by order, symmetry, predictability. They organize chaos. And they bring order and hope and stability to our chaotic lives.
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.
The God who's lifted up above Calvary, abandoned and forsaken, should draw a more discerning crowd of followers.
I’m still laughing now as hard as I laughed back then. And the salve that he gave me in that moment still works some strange magic on me to this day.
Inside our heads is a courtroom where our whole lives are put on trial. And we are declared guilty of things. Big things, little things. God things, human things. True things, false things. We never can measure up.
We’ve been desperate—and it is a gift of God when we are, when we realize our lost condition!
Though they have never left the church, they have been lost all the while.
When I first began to hear that the Bible’s good news was a whole lot less about me and a whole lot more about Christ, I just didn’t get it.