The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian-especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the kingdom of God.

The sinner is not the one who uses a lot of grace... The saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on take off.

We know we can't be spiritually transformed by just focusing on the will.

The spirit is the part that is supposed to consciously direct everything in the person, including the soul.

Projects of personal transformation rarely succeed by accident, drift, or imposition.

And God has set up prayer in such a way that, if you want to explain it away, you can. That's the human mind. God set it up like that for a reason, which is this: God ordained that people should be governed in the end by what they want.

Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.