Growth comes from God, to those with surrendered, yielded hearts.

A broken person understands she needs rescue, and she depends on God to resurrect and deliver. And she also understands that even if God chooses not to deliver, His ways are higher and more amazing then what we can fathom.

When the world careens out of control, we can rest in the fact that God spun this world with a simple word. Matter from emptiness. Beauty from void. Community from chaos.

It’s an act of our will to choose to see people simply as wildly loved by God, to assume their beauty before guessing their depravity.

My stubborn, self-savvy heart will not reach for the sky if my earth becomes everything I need. If people fill me up then where is my need for the transcendent? If everything is glory and beauty and sweetness and light, will I be the type of soul that reaches to Jesus?

Pain can either thrust me into the arms of Jesus or make me turn my back on Him. Either way, it's a choice.

Jesus wastes none of our stories, even our tales of woe. He transforms them into epic adventures where we dare to face our past for the sake of our present.

We may not understand the pathways God lays out before us. We may not even like walking the journey. But even in failure, we can trust that He’ll do more than we expect.

We enslave in the manner we talk to ourselves. But the truth is, God already set us free. He secured our release. To constantly hurt ourselves, resting in our inadequacy, is to call Him a LIAR.