If we are to use our minds rightly, we must live in an attitude of constant openness and learning.

Grace is not opposed to effort; it's opposed to earning.

And the God who hears is also the one who speaks. He has spoken and is still speaking. Humanity remains his project, not its own, and his initiatives are always at work among us.

In one way or another, it is a common mistake to think transformation is all in the will. And it isn't! It's in the mind - how we think, what occupies our minds, and so forth. It's in our feelings. It's in our body.

What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.

My central claim is that we become like Christ by doing one thing-by following Him in the overall style of life He chose for Himself. If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that He knew how to live. We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities He engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities He Himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of the Father.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence