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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Ultimately, the lie we have believed is that God is like we are. He is not. Thank God that he is not. He is the Lord who reverses all our expectations.
For most of us, waiting on God is not funny at all. It makes us wonder if he cares. If he has forgotten us. In our darkest hours, many even wonder if the atheists are right, if our prayers are nothing more than sick words vomited into an empty heaven.
Rather than praying a lie by pretending all is well, this psalm places upon our lips a truthful plea. A godly complaint. These are God’s words, given as gifts to you, by which you can speak back to him.
My best teacher, the instructor who taught me more theology than any other, has been the devil.
Job’s friend Zophar had it up to here! He was done hearing Job defend himself in the midst of his suffering. Surely, Job must have done SOMETHING to bring all this calamity upon himself.
His glory is made known precisely in the cross, His strength in weakness, His wisdom in folly, His exaltation in humiliation.
For the less we tell these stories of sin, the more it seems we are ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of bad people.
In divorce God married me to the cross. I didn’t want it; indeed, I hated it. But upon my shoulders God laid it. The ring of nails. The veil of darkness. The kiss of death. When we are stripped of all the good we think we are and have, we come face to face with the evil within. We fight and wrestle and gasp and die and become nothing.
I don’t mean simply that I “loved the darkness rather than the light because my deeds were evil,” as Jesus says (John 3:19). While that is true, there was deeper magic at work. I loved the darkness because I feared all the good things in the light.
With regard to evil, your objective is not merely to tempt humans to do bad things. Yes, of course, there is profit in theft and adultery and such, but only if you follow through to the next step.
Have you ever watched The Matrix? Crazy movie, right? The thing that continually keeps reminding me of that movie is the last thing you’d probably think of, even though the movie is rife with motifs, themes, and analogies of it.
Case in point: Jonah. Calling this man to be a prophet makes about as much as sense as hiring an executioner to be the CEO of a hospital.