In the human heart there is a built-in obsolescence factor. It does not matter how powerful and influential you are, how much education you have, how selfcontrolled or holy you consider yourself—your heart, if you do not guard it, will break down.

For Noah, preaching 120 years without results meant choosing the hard road year after year. Nehemiah, building the wall of Jerusalem, faced constant harassment by enemies from within and without. We cannot honestly, authentically, reasonably and deliberately serve our Lord without our willingness to accept difficulties and inconveniences.

Yet so often it seems that victory eludes us. It is when our self-confidence is finally destroyed and is replaced with dependence upon God that we have victory.

Faith deals exclusively with believing God and His Word.

We pretend with a spiritual life we don't live, a peace we don't experience and a holiness and commitment we don't possess. ... We will never make any progress in becoming more like Jesus unless we permit God to cut us open, search our hearts, try us, know our thoughts and then change us from the inside. Only then can we become real according to the Word of God.

Love was the bedrock of Jesus' life, the very reason He came to seek and save the lost.

The spirit of submission is choosing His way over ours for His sake.