Joe Warren > Recent Status Updates

"God knows you better than you know yourself. He knows just how small and frail you are. He knows you're just one person... your limitations. He is in touch with just how potent He, Himself, is. And right now, He desires to do huge, God-sized things through you, if you're ready to abandon the quest of making more of self and to embrace the miracle of being small, yet knowing His name. It all starts when you look up."

"Son, if you can, let it happen....by not resisting the experience, I would get through it even though it would take time"

Found my way back to reading. Had felt frustrated in myself for dropping the ball and the work taking a backseat..

Then I read this line on Page 96: "You may want to be perfect, but perfection is almost always tied to punishment. A man who is obsessed with being perfect is often a man looking for a reason to punish himself. Let go of the punishment and embrace the empathy of being a man dedicated to betterment"

They were my transgressions, but his wounds.
My iniquities, but his chastisement.
My sin, his sorrow.

His punishment bought my peace.
His grief, my joy.
His death, my life.

"God makes clear to people their great misery, so that they may come to him. He wounds so he may cure. All affliction is meant to direct us to the fountain of life, Jesus Christ himself.

...for your unbelieving neighbors to know the truth of God's love, you must manifest this broken and contrite heart. You must be close enough to be seen in transparent and vulnerable ways."

"Learn to father the boy within you"

"A father's pain, if left unattended, will inevitably become the burden of the son."

"If we reduce sin to a mere breaking of relationship, rather than understanding it as the traitorous rebellion of a beloved subject against his good and righteous King, we will never understand why the death of God's Son was required to address it."

The one rule of men: Don't talk about what it's like to be a man who is struggling. Don't engage in conversation about the failing marriage, the grief of having a parent die or the shame of having a business on the brink of collapse. Suck it up. Stuff it down. Deal with it like a man-alone.

This is the one rule you must absolutely break. In fact, breaking it is imperative to your health, fulfillment and well-being.

"Who else but Bible-believing Christians can make redemptive sense of tragedy? Who can see hope in the promises of God when the real, lived circumstances look dire? Who else knows that the sin that will undo me is my own, not my neighbor's, no matter how big my neighbor's sin may appear?"

"God is infinitely compassionate and infinitely ready to forgive, so that it ought to be ascribed exclusively to our unbelief, if we do not obtain pardon from him."

"He isn't like you. Even the most intense of human love is but the faintest echo of heaven's cascading abundance...He intends to restore you into radiant resplendence..and that is dependent not on you keeping yourself clean but on taking your mess to Him

"It is one thing, as a child, to be told your father loves you. You believe him. You take him at his word.

But it is another thing, unutterably more real, to be swept up in his embrace, to feel the warmth, to hear his beating heart within his chest, to instantly know the protective grip of his arms.

It's one thing to hear he loves you; it's another thing to feel his love. This is the glorious work of the Spirit."

"What if we never needed to advocate for ourselves because another had undertaken to do so?

What if that advocate knew exhaustively just how fallen we are, and yet at the same time was able to make a better defense for us than we ever could?

No blame shifting or excuses..., but perfectly just, pointing to his all-sufficient sacrifice and sufferings on the cross in our place?

We would be free."

"Our sinning goes to the uttermost. But His saving goes to the uttermost. And his saving always outpaces and overwhelms our sinning, because he always lives to intercede for us."

"But I .."

Raise your objections. None can threaten these invincible words: "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out."

For those united to him, the heart of Jesus is not a rental; it is your new permanent residence. You are not a tenant; you are a child.

His heart is not a ticking time bomb; his heart is the green pastures and still waters of endless reassurances of his presence and comfort... It is who he is.