One way requires that we look at our imagination. Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is what you do with your solitude.”120 In other words, the true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention. What do you enjoy daydreaming about? What occupies your mind when you

keep from clutching them too tightly, of being enslaved to them. We will never do so by mouthing abstractions about how great God is. We have to know, to be assured, that God so loves, cherishes, and delights in us that we can rest our hearts in him for our significance and security and handle anything that happens in life.

It appears that finally, she had taken her heart’s deepest hopes off of her husband and her children, and had put them on the Lord. Jacob and Laban had stolen Leah’s life, but when she gave her heart finally to the Lord, she got her life back.

We learn that through all of life there runs a ground note of cosmic disappointment. You are never going to lead a wise life until you understand that.

from the troubles of life in a way that only God can.

Our patterns of spending reveal our idols.

De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some “incomplete joy of this world” and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry.

This takes what are called “the spiritual disciplines,” such as private prayer, corporate worship, and meditation. 123 The disciplines take cognitive knowledge and make it a life-shaping reality in our hearts and imaginations. Spiritual disciplines are basically forms of worship, and it is worship that is the final way to replace the idols of your

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when he’s actually saving us.