Aaron Pratt > Recent Status Updates

The reason God makes calamity the occasion for offering Christ to the world is that the supreme, all-satisfying greatness of Christ shines more brightly when Christ sustains us in suffering than it often does in prosperity.

The only thing worse than failing to realize any of your dreams, is seeing them all come true. You were meant for something more. Even if you could be known the world over, what does it matter if you have no time to be known by God?

I don't believe it is wise or truthful to the power of the gospel to identify oneself by the sins of ones past or the temptations of ones present, but rather to only be defined by the Christ who has overcome both for those he calls his own.
We are not what our temptation says of us but what Christ has done for us.

I believe that the gospel— the good news of Christ crucified in our place to remove the wrath of God and provide forgiveness of sins and power for sanctification—is our only hope for the kind of racial diversity and harmony that ultimately matters. If we abandon the fullness of the gospel to make racial and ethnic diversity quicker or easier, we create a mere shadow of the kingdom, an imitation.

We usually being the journey toward God thinking, "what do I have to do to get this or that from Him?" But eventually we have to begin thinking, " what do I have to do to get Him?" If you don't make that transition you will never actually meet the real God, but will only end up believing some caricature version of Him.

Having thoughtful conversations below surface level, we don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers, we are interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.

Having learned that Jesus had made himself of no reputation before others, Paul was unconcerned about his own reputation.

Bad behaviors, even those that are culturally acceptable like a little grumbling, are expressions of our spiritual allegiances.

While we all acknowledge the bad within us we are less willing to acknowledge that it is sin. Sin means that our badness is primarily directed at God, and most people are not consciously shaking their fists at God. Instead we are not thinking about him at all.

Jesus is more interested in making us grow than having us look finished.

The promise of grace and live in our lives is this: our best day isn't good enough, and our worst day isn't bad enough. We're invited because we're loved, not because we've earned it.

I am convinced that the holiness of God is one of the most important ideas that a Christian can ever grapple with. It is basic to our whole understanding of God and of Christianity.

We are never truly enlightened until the light of Jesus Christ has burned brightly in our hearts. We need a compass. We need a live for holy Scriptures which point us to the truth. Only when discover the truth found in Christ can we progress into the future.

The more words (truths) we use to describe our salvation by God's grace, the more influential this gracious salvation is for our sense of identity. (Blessed, chosen, holy, adopted, accepted, redeemed, sealed IN CHRIST, Eph 1:1-14)