Do you feel more loved when God makes much of you or do you feel more loved when God at the cost of His Son allows you to make much of Him?

This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.

I feel a special calling to impart hope to the church I serve.

The gospel of God and the love of God are expressed finally and fully in God's gift of himself for our everlasting pleasure. "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

Exultation that does not flow from education, affections that do not flow from knowing, savoring that does not flow from seeing, feeling that does not flow from thinking - are hollow and rootless - noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. And God is not glorified by artificial and empty passions. True delight is rooted in true doctrine. God-centered exultation is rooted in God-centered education.

Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.

So you can see what is happening in the New Testament. Worship is being significantly deinstitutionalized, delocalized, de-externalized. The whole thrust is being taken off of ceremony and seasons and places and forms and is being shifted to what is happening in the heart - not just on Sunday but every day and all the time in all of life.