Our attempts to trust others will often be frustrated, but that's because God never wanted us to trust others. He wanted us to love others but to trust him alone.
As long as we see church life as a meeting we’ll miss its reality and its depth. If the truth were told, the Scriptures tell us very little about how the early church met. It tells us volumes about how they shared life together. They didn’t see the church as a meeting or an institution, but as a family living under Father.
The fruit of the Spirit is not what we can make ourselves do for a moment, But what God makes us to be for a lifetime.
God often has to untangle some things in you to help you see Him. Even if this process takes months, it's not because he is waiting to see how sincere you are; it's because he is working deep inside you to sort out those things that crowd him out of your heart and set your focus on your own efforts or your own failures.
There is no one that God does not love with all that he is. His love reaches beyond every sin and failure, hoping that at some moment they will come to know just how loved they are.
The sad truth is that most Christians spend their entire lives trying to score points with Someone who is not keeping score.
I am convinced that real community flows out of right relationship with God and not that right relationship with God flows out of right community.
