If guilt tells us that we've done something wrong, then shame tells us that we are something wrong. So many people feel isolated, not good enough, defined by the labels they wear rather than the identity they have in Christ. The love of Christ tells us that we're accepted; that we belong.

God's love is a gift that can make you forget yourself at times. The Scottish writer George MacDonald said, "It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in his presence." God loves us as we are right now! That's one of the things I'm most grateful for. I love the freedom to be myself in God. I pray that a year from now, five years from now, I will be a godlier woman, but I know God won't love me any more than he does right this minute.

If guilt tells us that we've done something wrong, then shame tells us that we are something wrong. So many people feel isolated, not good enough, defined by the labels they wear rather than the identity they have in Christ. The love of Christ tells us that we're accepted; that we belong.

But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.

It takes deliberate and continuous effort to carve out time in our overfull schedules to listen to the voice of God.

It's my absolute passionate belief that every single human being, man, woman, or child, is aching to find a face-to-face relationship with God.

Lord God, I long to hear Your voice but not just secondhand through teachers, as wonderful and godly as they can be. I long to hear Your voice firsthand.