For Jesus, Paul, and John, the underlying root of our lives is this: “God loves you before you have ever done anything.” Our love, agape, our wholehearted commitment-love toward God, is a reflexive response to God loving us.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the

Love and acceptance from our Father are part of our inheritance in Christ.

Amy Carmichael, the Irish missionary to India, wrote, “Keep close, keep close. If you are close you will be keen. Your heart will be set on the things that abide. You will drink of His spirit and you will thirst for souls even as He thirsts. You will not be attracted by the world that crucified Him, but you will love the people in that world who

This is the daily life of turning face-to-face with God, putting the thoughts of His heart into our hearts and minds, those ways He thinks about us, about life, about reality. We sit quietly for a time, learning to clear our minds of thoughts, distractions, and today’s tasks. This is daily conversion, daily metanoia. It brings day-by-day

I talked negatively about myself endlessly, even in my prayer journal. I thought I was practicing humility, but negative self-talk isn’t humility; it’s pride and self-obsession. God doesn’t want this from us. He wants metanoia, that simple turning to recognize Him as real, present, and in us. He wants confession. Confession involves telling the

Light drives out darkness. When I flip the light on, darkness is dispelled. Light and darkness don’t coexist. Light overcomes the dark wherever it shines. There may be a few places the dark can hide—under the desk, behind the speakers, under the bookshelf. But if I shine a flashlight there, the darkness can’t hide, and it can’t fight the light; it

This isn’t an issue of whether God loves us. It doesn’t mean we never sin, or that we must “get saved” all over again when we do. Sin is a fellowship problem. We’re turned in the wrong direction, trying to get our desires and needs met. As a son or daughter, we’re ignoring the voice of our Father, thinking we know what we need better than He does.

It’s impossible to have one’s mind and heart full of the pursuit of addiction, narcissism, and theft, or money and power, and at the same time be in continual fellowship with God. Jesus tells us the two things are mutually exclusive. And John says it even more comprehensively: “Whoever abides in Him does not sin” (1 John 3:6).