The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I'd been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered.

I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.

I think it's super important for the church itself to rediscover the gospel.

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you have construct for yourself, or that others have construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative.

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

The gospel is good news to those who know they don't measure up. It's offensive to those who think they do.