Today you will envy the blessings of another, or you will bask in the wonder of the amazing grace you have been given.

True restoration takes patience, subtlety, skill, and grace.

Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving

When your sin is exposed, you will run toward confession and forgiveness or self-righteousness and self-justification.

The cross guarantees that even in your darkest moment God will never turn in disgust and walk away. There is no rebellion, no weakness, no foolishness, no evil of heart that the cross can't defeat and grace can't transform.

Human self-righteousness denies the need for the saving, enabling grace of Christ. Human righteousness embraces the cruelest of Satan's lies, that a person can be righteous by keeping the law. If that were true, there would have been no need for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Embedded in the larger story of redemption is a principle we must not miss: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things in the lives of others.