God is inviting you today to appropriately grieve your pains and losses and to acknowledge the world is seriously broken.

I was spending too much time thinking about how I was doing, if I was learning everything I was supposed to be learning during this difficult season, whether I was doing it right or not, taking my spiritual pulse, etc - my inner lawyer was working overtime.

Nothing makes me want to obey more than knowing that God unconditionally loves me and forgives me even when I disobey.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something.

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

God has hardwired me to thoroughly enjoy and be sharpened by good and friendly theological discussion about the gospel.