We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
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.

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Character development? Change? Saying that it’s behind you? Yeah right. You’re just saying that because you want your nice polished image back. You haven’t changed. We know. We’ve got the receipts.
God doesn’t give us second chances. No one earns another shot at forgiveness. We cannot earn forgiveness, it’s too costly.
We’ve become experts at making deals with God.
This is an excerpt adapted from “Let the Bird Fly” written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Jesus continues to breathe His gifts on His beloved. He continues to breathe absolution upon sinners like me and you, He continues to fill us with the Holy Spirit and all His comfort.
Sometimes I think I've gone through the whole forgiveness process, but forgiveness for me often feels like I'm weeding my garden. I forgive and another offense pops up.
There is no justification except by faith alone. The radical forgiveness itself puts the old to death and calls forth the new.
He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, even as we curse and yell at him for not pleasing us with our pettish wishes.
There is a repentance that is anti-repentance, for it clings tightly to the sin over which it sorrows, because in that sorrow is its consolation. In this warped spiritual scheme, our anguish is atonement; shame is our absolution; tears are our baptism. We feel better knowing how bad we feel about our wrongs. But there is a much better way.
He is our gold. He is our pure garment. He is our healing. He is our sanity. He is our wholeness.
Christ presents to us such liberty, so that we as Christians according to our faith may tolerate no other master, but only hold that we are baptized and called unto Christ, and through him have become justified and sanctified.
In the quiet of your own uptown, where your own sins bear down on you and create a troubled conscience before the world, before others, and before God, your Lord reaches across the chasm of brokenness to take your hand.