God loves us. Yes, He surely does. Absolutely, but it’s not some pampering love—it’s a perfecting love. It’s a love that wants our highest and best usefulness for His purposes.

God can get every characteristic of Christ into your life if He can just teach you to persevere.

Confession is to say the same thing about your sin that God says.

you can’t accomplish God’s agenda in your own strength.

Repentance is when you detect and destroy the rationalizations that lead to your sin. It’s changing your mind about those lies.

it was not appropriate to vent his frustration on others simply because he was working through something that bothered him.

God will not reveal what He is trying to produce in you unless you give Him a blank slate to work on and you can say from your heart, “No restrictions, Lord. Anything in my life, go for it, I’m Yours, period!” Bottom line: Until you are cooperating fully with God’s desire to transform you (chapter 2), He will not give wisdom in regard to what He is

Regret is a useless emotion; it produces nothing. Regret focuses on what can never change. Repentance focuses on what has to change.

The Greek word for patience literally means the ability to remain under.