Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.

If you are sufficient for your task, it's too small.

If we love God's fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions.

heaven is a place of unparalleled and indescribable joy

We have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.' There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.

So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be.