Therefore, because the sin in our hearts makes us desperate to keep control of our lives and to live the way we want, we cannot acknowledge the magnitude and scope of what we owe him.

Will I nurse my pride when he emptied himself of his own glory to save me?”

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done. It doesn’t matter if you have killed people. If Jesus Christ died on the cross so that you are saved by grace alone, then my love is infinitely

Jesus responds, “It’s all in the Lord’s Prayer,” and we say, “In the what?” It’s so familiar we can no longer hear it. Yet everything we need is within it. How do we overcome the deadly peril of familiarity?

When I forget I’m being sanctified through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit—I give up on myself, stop trying to change.

“We must,” Torrey continued, “. . . give up any thought that we have any claims upon God. . . . But Jesus Christ has great claims on God, and we should go to God in our prayers not on the ground of any goodness in ourselves, but on the ground of Jesus Christ’s claims.”

the forgiveness of sins”

In the Garden of Eden, we sinned and lost the face of God.

Unless at the very least we recognize this heart disorder and realize how much it distorts our lives, our prayers will be part of the problem, not an agent of our healing.