Easter means that Christmas worked.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

Unless we believe the gospel, we will be driven in all we do-whether obeying or disobeying-by pride ('self-love') or fear ('of damnation'). Apart from 'grateful remembering' of the gospel, all good works are done then for sinful motives. Mere moral effort may restrain the heart, but does not truly change the heart. Moral effort merely 'jury rigs' the evil of the heart to produce moral behavior out of self-interest. It is only a matter of time before such a thin tissue collapses.

At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone. . . . Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast.

To discover the real you, look at what you spend time thinking about when no one is looking.

Prayer should be done regularly, persistently, resolutely, and tenaciously at least daily, whether we feel like it or not.

Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.