If grace is to be free - which is the very meaning of grace - we cannot view it as something to be repaid.

Don't coast through life without a passion.

If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.

All the different ways God has chosen to display his glory in creation and redemption seem to reach their culmination in the praises of his redeemed people. God governs the world with glory precisely that he might be admired, marvelled at, exalted and praised. The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints.

If gratitude is not rooted in the beauty of God before the gift, it is probably disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to delight in him for who he is so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!

I've never heard anyone say the really deep lessons of life have come in times of ease and comfort. But, I have heard many saints say every significant advance I've ever made in grasping in the depth of God's love and growing deep with Him, have come through suffering.

Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.