Camarie Weeks’s Reviews > Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners > Status Update

“When pain comes, it is not simply to hurt us, to teach us a lesson, to whip us into shape, it is from a tender Father, for our healing. “You lie too near his heart for him to hurt you,” wrote the Puritan John Flavel.”

“Refusing to be honest with another [Christian] is works righteousness in disguise; we are believing that we need to save face, to retain uprightness of appearance…The gospel says we have nothing within us to commend us to God; why would we leave that theology in Christian fellowship and pretend that we do have virtue within to commend us.”

Ephesians 3:19, “and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” “Paul prays that the Ephesians would be given supernatural power…to know how much Jesus loves them. Not just to have the love of Christ. To know the love of Christ…Paul is praying that they would know what cannot be known.”

“We were secured in Christ before we had ever heard of Christ.” See 2 Timothy 1:8-9

Discussing the pattern of healthy self-despair and then not staying there but looking to Jesus: “Ponder, unhurriedly, how vile, left to yourself, you are.”

“Jesus is fully engaged on our behalf, as engaged as ever he was on earth. He is interceding for us…He is more committed to your growth in him than you are.”