Tullian Tchividjian
There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.
The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.
Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!
The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word.
The required cheerfulness that characterizes many of our churches produces a suffocating environment of pat, religious answers to the painful, complex questions that riddle the lives of hurting people.
We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we'll dig ourselves out.
For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you. And in the end, what we discover is that this really is enough.
The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.
Christianity affirms that Jesus severed the link between suffering and deserving once for all on Calvary. God put the ledgers away and settled the accounts.
A religious approach to marriage is the idea that if we work hard enough at something, we can earn the acceptance, approval, and life we think we deserve because of our obedient performance.
Here's one way I can know that I've forgotten the gospel of grace: when your sin bothers me more than my sin.Collection: Religious
We are broken people living in a broken world with other broken people. We all need grace.Collection: People
The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need graceCollection: People
Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.Collection: Lawyer
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.Collection: Giving
God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.Collection: Clean
If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.Collection: Idols
Jesus plus nothing equals everything; everything minus Jesus equals nothing.Collection: Jesus
Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other.Collection: Grace
If you feel compelled to respond every time you're criticized it reveals just how much you've built your identity on being right.Collection: Identity
God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures.Collection: Acceptance
If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.Collection: Running
If the depths of everyone's sin was made public, we would all be much more gracious to each other.Collection: Depth
The gospel is good news to those who know they don't measure up. It's offensive to those who think they do.Collection: Thinking
A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.Collection: Believe
Mt. Sinai says, 'You must do. Mt. Calvary says, 'Because you couldn't, Jesus did.' Don't run to the wrong mountain for your hiding placeCollection: Friday
The grace of God sets us free from a life of perfection, performing, and pretending.Collection: Perfection
Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top.Collection: Running
Suffering reveals to us the two things that ultimately matter: that we are weak but He is strong.Collection: Strong
The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me.Collection: Thinking
God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.Collection: Bad Day
Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.Collection: People
The deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.Collection: Heart
We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.Collection: Mistake
The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation. I've got friends who are surfers, doctors, lawyers, artists and entertainers. Some people are cool and some people are geeky. I look around at my friends and I think, only the gospel has the power to put together a friendship like this.Collection: Artist
Grace doesn't lead us into destructive behavior. Sin does. And grace is the only remedy for sin. The kindness of God leads to repentance.Collection: Kindness
God did not rescue me out of the pain, He rescued me through the pain!Collection: Pain
Whether it's a Christian or a non-Christian, there's nothing like suffering to show us how small, needy, and not in control we are. Suffering has a way of sobering us up to the realization that we can't make it on our own, that we need help, that we're broken.Collection: Christian
If you look at the gospel, it just doesn't break things apart. The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation.Collection: Together
Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.Collection: Thinking
I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.Collection: Acceptance
Jesus has done everything for you.Collection: Jesus
Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.Collection: Morality
The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.Collection: Heart
Christian growth doesn't happen by first behaving better, but by believing better--believi ng in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.Collection: Christian
Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.Collection: Real
I was always in places where I was widely accepted, approved and loved and I was finally in a place where people did not approve of me, did not accept me and did not love me. It was killing me.Collection: People
Our hearts are continuously rebellious. Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way." If this goes on day after day after day, year after year, month after month, it would understandable for God to say, "I've given you ten trillion tries. You're finished." But it's not. So in that sense, His grace is always surprising, never ceases to be amazing and His mercy is remarkably outrageous.Collection: Heart
There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.Collection: Heart