One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

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“As if” Christians aren’t allowed to reflect; that they’re not kind, generous, brave, or loyal. They’re not living up to the example of biblical saints.
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.
If even your family has disowned and discarded you; yes, if every single person in this world regards you as a hopeless, embarrassing failure at life, the Father of all mercies does not.
“Why now,” I said to no one, or to myself, or to God. Whoever. I was drunk, strung out, mostly dead, hopeless in the darkness. I knew I’d done it all to myself. I didn’t need God to drive the point home.
For many, there are days when they’re as excited about going to work on Sunday morning as you are about going to work on Monday morning.
I looked up at the cross and saw what God had become to bring me home. He had become what I was.
Believe in God, belong to a church, and behave yourself isn’t the Gospel.
When you see a cross, you see the smile of your Father. He’s not mad at you. He’s overjoyed that you’re his daughter.
They may also be fellow sufferers who’ve hit their own bottom with you. Whoever they are, they wear the mask of Jesus the crucified. In them and through them the Lord is at work to love you.
Without getting into specifics, I have suffered a loss that seemed at times unbearable. I cried. I pleaded. I questioned. I prayed. I drank. Rinse. Repeat.
Why am I not surprised when people have a need to feel, touch or sense God in some tangible way? Part of it probably has to do with my church experience consisting of denominations that place a fairly strong emphasis on some form of tangible, experiential expression of God.
I stumbled down labyrinthine paths, crawled in and out of cavernous pits, got lost a million times, and somehow ended up a little farther down the road to healing. Yet in all those crooked lines I see the hand of God writing straight.