It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be!

Do I learn through dark providences, or simply seem relieved when they are over?

God made everything else but man "after its kind"' - that is, according to the purpose and destiny he envisaged for it. But he made man in His own image. Man is patterned on God! He was made to represent God - in created, human form.

The Father did not require the death of Christ to persuade Him to love us. Christ died because the Father loves us.

The conviction that Christian doctrine matters for Christian living is one of the most important growth points of the Christian life.

God's guidance will require patience on our part. His leading is not usually a direct assurance, a revelation, but His sovereign controlling of the circumstances of our lives, with the Word of God as our rule. It is therefore, inevitable that the unfolding of His purposes will take time - sometimes a very long time.

Christians have a new identity. We are no longer 'in Adam' but 'in Christ'; no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.