Prayer Is First And Foremost An Act

We Must Be Ready To Allow Ourselves To Be Interrupted By God... It Is A Strange Fact That Christians And Even Ministers Frequently Consider Their Work So Important And Urgent That They Will Allow Nothing To Disturb Them. They Think They Are Doing God A Service In This But Actually They Are Disdaining God's "crooked But Straight Path". It Is Part Of The Discipline Of Humility That We Must Not Spare Our Hand Where It Can Perform Service And That We Do Not Assume That Our Schedule Is Our Own To Manage, But Allow It To Be Arranged By God.

Define Yourself Radically As One Beloved By God. This Is The True Self. Every Other Identity Is Illusion.

Though It Is True That The Church Must Always Dissociate Itself From Sin, It Can Never Have Any Excuse For Keeping Any Sinner At A Distance.

The Anything-goes Passiveness Of The Religious And Political Left Is Matched By The Preachy Moralism Of The Religious And Political Right. The Person Who Uncritically Embraces Any Party Line Is Guilty Of An Idolatrous Surrender Of Her Core Identity As Abba's Child. Neither Liberal Fairy Dust Nor Conservative Hardball Addresses Our Ragged Human Dignity.

The Saved Sinner Is Prostrate In Adoration, Lost In Wonder And Praise. He Knows Repentance Is Not What We Do In Order To Earn Forgiveness; It Is What We Do Because We Have Been Forgiven. It Serves As An Expression Of Gratitude Rather Than An Effort To Earn Forgiveness. Thus The Sequence Of Forgiveness And Then Repentance, Rather Than Repentance And Then Forgiveness, Is Crucial For Understanding The Gospel Of Grace.