Amazing Revealings for 2010's Christmas

----"But doesn't God promise to bless those who follow his ways?"

----"Certainly that is the fruit of doing so, but he doesn't define those blessings in your terms. He's leading you on a greater journey than you can yet fathom. Keep following him and you'll be absolutely astounded by him. The hardest thing you'll learn in this journey is to give up the illusion of controlling your own life or that you can manipulate God to bless you."

----"So he likes me to suffer?"

----".....He agonizes right along with you. How can he now? He loves you. He is not doing this to you, he is working through the brokenness of this world to accomplish something greater in you. Once you know that, even the sting of difficult circumstances will be blunted. You'll find him in the midst of them and watch him accomplish his purpose without your control. This is where his life truly begins to take hold in you."

----"But that's not how God views the cross, Jake. His wrath wasn't an expression of the punishment sin deserves; it was the antidote for sin and shame. The purpose of the cross, as Paul wrote of it, was for God to make his Son to become sin itself so that he could condemn sin in the likeness of human flesh and purge it from the race. His plan was not just to provide a way to forgive sin, but to destroy it so that we might live free."