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I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.

"You reconcile with the people you can," Fiske said.
"And all you can do with the rest is to bring them to justice. Which you did."

"When you near the end of your life... when you're a lonely old man... you start realizing what your accomplishments are really worth," he said. "The most brilliant clue I ever deciphered, the millions I earned- even the microwavable burrito itself-sometimes I think I'd be willing to trade all of it for a single hug from someone who truly loves me."

Your anguish is his home. Go to him.
"If you knew his heart, you would."

Whatever is crumbling all around you in your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly.

But there is one thing for us to do. Jesus says it in Matthew 11:28.
"Come to me."

WHAT NOW?
This is a book about the heart of Christ and of God. But what are we to do with this?
The main answer is, nothing. To ask, "Now how do I apply this to my life?" would be a trivialization of the point of this study. If an Eskimo wins a vacation to a sunny place, he doesn't arrive in his hotel room, step out onto the balcony, and wonder how to apply that to his life. He just enjoys it. He just basks.

Ephesians 2:7 is telling you that your death is not an end but a beginning. Not a wall, but a door. Not an exit, but an entrance.

"So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" —what does that mean, for those in Christ? It means that one day God is going to walk us through the wardrobe into Narnia, and we will stand there, paralyzed with joy, wonder, astonishment, and relief.

The souls of departed saints with Christ in heaven, shall have Christ as it were unbosomed unto them, manifesting those infinite riches of love towards them, that have been there from eternity.
... They shall eat and drink abundantly, and swim in the ocean of love, and be eternally swallowed up in the infinitely bright, and infinitely mild and sweet beams of divine love.

When communion with God had been one's oxygen, one's meat and drink, throughout ones whole life, without a single moment of interruption by sin—to suddenly bear the unspeakable weight of all our sins? Who could survive that? To lose that depth of communion was to die. The great love at the heart of the universe was being rent in two. The world's Light was going out.

We love until we are betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness.
We love up to a limit. Jesus loves to the end.

To say the same truth backward: Jesus didn't die for us once we became strong (5:6); he didn't die for us once we started to overcome our sinfulness (5:8); God did not reconcile us to himself once we became friendly toward him (5:10).
God didn't meet us halfway. He refused to hold back, cautious, assessing our worth. That is not his heart.

The two passages —Psalm 103:11 and Isaiah 55:9—mutually illumine one another. God's ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts in that his are thoughts of love and ways of compassion that stretch to a degree beyond our mental horizon.

There is only one other place in the Bible where we have the exact phrase "as high as the heavens are above the earth." In Psalm 103
David prays: "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him" (v. 11).

It’s as if God is saying in verse 8 that he and we think very differently, whereas in verse 9 he is saying precisely how, namely, his "thoughts" (the Hebrew word doesn't merely mean
"passing mental reflection" but "plans," "devices," "intentions," pur-poses") are higher, grander, enveloped in a compassion for which we fallen sinners have no natural category.

In verse 8 God says his ways and ours are different; in verse 9 he gets more specific and says his thoughts are higher.

So God tells us in plain terms how tiny our natural views of his heart are. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. And not because were just a few degrees off. No, "as high as the heavens are above the earth" —a Hebrew way of expressing spatial infinitude— "so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (v. 9).

He is telling us that we cannot view his expressions of his mercy with our old eyes.Our very view of God must change. What would we say to a sevenyearold who upon being given a birthday gift by his loving father, immediately scrambled to reach for his piggy bank to try to pay his dad back? How painful to a father's heart.That child needs to change his very view of who his father is and what his father delights to do

…And in context, it means something quite different. It is a statement not of the surprise of God's mysterious providence but of the surprise of God's compassionate heart.

When life takes a difficult turn, Christians often remind others, with a shrug, "His ways are not our ways" -communicating the mysteries of divine providence by which he orchestrates events in ways that surprise us. The mysterious depth of divine providence is, of course, a precious biblical truth. But the passage in which we find "his ways are not our ways" comes from Isaiah 55…

…The reason is that Jesus does not merely intend to "pass by" the disciples the way one car on the highway may bypass others. His passing by is far more significant and only understood against its Old Testament background. Four times in Exodus 33-34 the Lord says he will "pass by" Moses, the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) using the same word (parerchomai) that Mark uses.

And now we begin to see why Jesus intended to "pass by" is disciples, struggling at the oars on the Sea of Galilee. The text says that "he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.
And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them" (Mark 6:48). Why would he intend to pass by them?….

In Exodus 33 Moses asks God, "Please show me your glory". How does God respond? "I will make all my goodness pass before you". Goodness? Isn't the glory of God a matter of his greatness, not his goodness? Apparently not. God then goes on to speak of showing mercy and grace to whomever he wills. He then tells Moses that he will place him in the deft of the rock and that (once again) his glory will pass by.

The sex drive is the greatest temptation known to a 20-year-old man The apostle Paul spoke of the only cure, saying "it is better to marry than to burn" I Corinthians 7.9 God made you that way. If you didn't "burn" a little, you wouldn't learn your need So it is not only normal it's necessary. Adam had to endure it for only a few hours; we have to walk around on fire for ten years or so It's tough but worth the wait

God created Adam but delayed providing him with a wife because he wanted the first man to feel his need—not just a sexual need, but the need for a friend, someone to notice and appreciate his handiwork, as well as someone to remind him to keep up the good work. The need for a lifetime partner is part of what makes us human.

Getting the right girl is as important as choosing the right boat when you intend to sail around the world.

Few sail into paradise and remain.

If we do come to him, as fierce as his lion-like judgment would have been against us, so deep will be his lamb-like tenderness for us (cf. Rev. 5:5-6; Isa. 40:10-11). We will be enveloped in one or the other. To no one will Jesus be neutral.

Translation: When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.

When Jesus, the Clean One, touched an unclean sinner, Christ did not become unclean. The sinner
became clean.