Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.

Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing.

Our very worst days are never beyond the reach of God's grace.

Grace... expresses two complementary thoughts: God's unmerited favor to us through Christ, and God's divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit.

God does not delight in our sufferings. He brings only that which is necessary, but He does not shrink from that which will help us grow.

... we did decide to trust Christ, but the reason we made that decision is that God had first made us spiritually alive. ... God comes to us when we're spiritually dead, when we don't even realize our condition, and gives us the spiritual ability to see our plight and to see the solution in Christ. God comes all the way, not partway, to meet us in our need. When we were dead, He made us alive in Christ. And the first act of that new life is to turn in faith to Jesus.

Giving thanks to God for both His temporal and spiritual blessings in our lives is not just a nice thing to do - it is the moral will of God. Failure to give Him the thanks due Him is sin.