We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

I was afraid that if I surrendered my life over to God, God would tell me not to do those things that I desperately wanted to do.

What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.

The gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it keeps Christians growing and growing every day. There's no reason to move beyond the gospel. There's only movement more into it.

Real, pure, unadulterated freedom happens when the resources of the gospel smash any sense of need to secure for myself anything beyond what Christ has already secured for me.

Only when we see that the way of God's law is absolutely inflexible will we see that God's grace is absolutely indispensable. A high view of the law reminds us that God accepts us on the basis of Christ's perfection, not our progress. Grace, properly understood, is the movement of a holy God toward an unholy people. He doesn't cheapen the law or ease its requirements. He fulfills them in his Son, who then gives his righteousness to us. That's the gospel. Pure and simple.

A biblical understanding of the Christian life is not 'let go and let God,' it's 'trust God and get going.'