The more I focused on my need to get better the worse I actually got - the more neurotic and self-conscious and self-absorbed I became.

God's grace meets us in messy places because messy places are all that there are.

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.

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 Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.

Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.