Many times people think if God has called you to something, he's promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.

The Gospel is good news not good advice. Advice = what we should do. News = report of what was done for us.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.

In Ephesians 5, Paul shows us that even on earth Jesus did not use his power to oppress us but sacrificed everything to bring us into union with him. And this takes us beyond the philosophical to the personal and the practical. If God had the gospel of Jesus's salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only 'works' to the degree that approximates the pattern of God's self-giving love in Christ.

Idolatry happens when we take good things and make them ultimate things

To love our success more than God and our neighbor hardens the heart, making us less able to feel and to sense.

When you forgive, that means you absorb the loss and the debt. You bear it yourself. All forgiveness, then, is costly.