[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.

Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.

...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially 'deify.' We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion, even if we think ourselves as highly irreligious.

If God does not have our highest allegiance, we will use prayer to try to get things that have that designation.

If you want God's grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing.