Only when we're thoroughly convinced that the Christian life is entirely of grace are we able to serve God out of a grateful and loving heart.

We must pray constantly for His enabling grace to say no to temptation, of choosing to take all practical steps to avoid known areas of temptation and flee from those that surprise us.

We fail to see the gospel as the solution to our greatest problem-our guilt, condemnation, and alienation from God. Beyond that, we fail to see it as the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with Him. As a result, many believers live in spiritual poverty.

We need to call sin what the Bible calls it and not soften it with modern expressions borrowed from our culture.

We might say God's wrath is His justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin is always judgment.

Sometimes the end God has in mind is to exercise our faith, so He brings us into straitened circumstances so that we might look up to Him and see His deliverance.

As we become soft and lazy in our bodies, we tend to become soft and lazy spiritually.