Jesus' blood was shed for us all; what remains is for us to accept His sacrifice in faith and obedience.

How we live is determined by what is ultimately fueling us - our deepest desire or end goal. Do we really want to know and follow God, or are we more interested in a comfortable, pleasurable life for ourselves? Jesus asked his disciples early on, "What do you seek?" And he's still asking that question today. To be motivated to live in the presence of God, we have to believe that "the good life" is really found in him and him alone.

A person may forget 90% of what a leader says, but he will never forget how the leader lives.

Jesus is the prime exemplar of life in God's presence. He lived out of an awareness of the identity God had given him, not the identity the world wanted to give him; he led an active, ongoing prayer life; he took time apart from the world to be with his Father; he made his Father's agenda his agenda; he made his Father's love for people evident in tangible ways; and so on. These are all characteristics that we should emulate in our lives.

When we see through the lens of God's truth, revealed primarily in his Word, everything comes into sharper focus. Suddenly, we'll see that everything is integrated and overlapping - that the world is not divided between the sacred and the secular, but there's one life, and God is the Master of all of it. God knows all things, past, present, and future, and is all-wise; when we train ourselves to see more as he sees, we'll pursue the things he values and seek to live before him as our primary audience.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who seek God and those who seek to avoid him... and both will be successful.

Believers are often encouraged to spend some time each day alone praying and reading the Bible. This is a good thing, modeled by Jesus himself. But too often people view this time with God as sufficient, and as separate from the rest of their lives; they essentially leave Jesus on their bedside table and ignore him the rest of the day. This is a far cry from the ongoing walking in the Spirit, abiding in Christ, persevering, praying, and rejoicing presented in Scripture.