Vicki

“Jesus’ salvation is not only like receiving a pardon and release from death row and prison. Then we’d be free, but on our own, left to make our own way in the world, thrown back on our own efforts if we’re to make anything of ourselves. But in the gospel, we discover that Jesus has taken us off death row and then has hung around our neck the Congressional Medal of Honor. We are received and welcomed as heroes, as if we had accomplished extraordinary deeds.”
― Timothy Keller, Romans 1-7 For You: For reading, for feeding, for leading

“Things good and bad will happen to us, of course. But what our life amounts to, at least for those who reach full age, is largely, if not entirely, a matter of what we become within.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“There will be a joyful obedience that flows from truly trusting this King. As the great sixteenth-century Reformer Martin Luther put it: “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” It brings about grateful, joyful, trusting obedience.”
― Timothy Keller, Romans 1-7 For You: For reading, for feeding, for leading

“For our Christian groups and their leaders, it means that there is a simple, straightforward way in which congregations of Jesus’ people can, without exception, fulfill his call to be an ecclesia, his “called out” ones: a touch point between heaven and earth, where the healing of the Cross and the Resurrection can save the lost and grow the saved into the fullness of human beings in Christ. No special facilities, programs, talents, or techniques are required. It doesn’t even require a budget. Just faithfulness to the process of spiritual formation in Christlikeness exposed in the Scriptures and in the lives of his “peculiar people” through the ages (Titus 2:14, KJV).”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ