Sin has broken apart everything that was meant to be together, but through Christ all is being brought back into harmony. Our disintegration — our broken-to-pieces-hood — is being healed. In Christ, our hope is for eternal health and wholeness.

If Jesus truly was the Son of God, we would not expect that truth to be obvious to us if our “eyes” can only see things that this world considers to be important. May we appraise Him carefully — and appraise His inner character the most carefully.

In the biblical account, we are dual creatures who straddle the physical and spiritual worlds. We have a brain, but we also have a mind — a reasoning faculty that reaches far beyond what the brain (which is its servant) can do.

While there is a need for patience, we also need to be diligent. Our transformation will not take place automatically, by divine decree. We have to embrace the process actively and wholeheartedly, submitting to God’s training for as long it takes.

If faith without works is insufficient (James 2:14-26), so is baptism without conversion. If we do not make the decision to walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4), it is to be wondered whether we really did die with Christ when we were baptized.

All the good things in life require committing ourselves to them. Hesitancy, doubt, and tentativeness will cut the very heart out of our discipleship to Christ. Distrusting God, we will never get the answers to our questions. So we must TRUST God.

If God exists, we need to take Him with utter seriousness. We must not relegate spiritual truths to a secondary status. To be people of faith means we’re committed to the massive continents of truth that lie beyond our present horizons.

To those whose hearts are turned toward God today, there are no more joyous sounds than those that emanate from His throne: the sounds of victory, of worship, and of freedom! Do we have ears to hear? Do our hearts resonate to the sounds of God’s joy?

It is no less true with God than with anyone else: we are delighted to receive communications from those whom we love. “This is the love of God,” John wrote, “that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

God’s satisfaction of our needs enlarges our capacity. For those who’ve progressed a little way down the path of spiritual growth, one of the most intense delights is that when we think He has filled our cup to the brim, He gives us a bigger cup.

Can we fail to get the point in Psalm 34? David’s concept of the good life was that it had to do with human character. His primary concern was with what a person is, and not with what that person might have or accomplish.

“Pleasure” and “fulfillment” often turn out to be disappointing, and that is certainly the case with material wealth. Possessions gained at the expense of higher values have an uncanny way of turning against their owners and breaking their hearts.

We need to understand that the object of the Christian’s hope is, as Paul says, our “adoption, the redemption of our body.” Christianity is first and foremost about eternity, and our hopes for this world ought to be minimal.

Here is a sobering thought: whether they are made under strong emotion or not, promises have to be kept. We are not later released from the obligations we bound ourselves to simply because “on further review” we see that they are inconvenient.

I know we don’t have the option of going to heaven until our work is done. But if today the Lord were to say, “Your work is done,” shouldn’t we be thrilled? Is there anything in this life that we wouldn’t gladly give up to be with the Lord today?

Whatever the reasons for our fixation on the past may be, we need to work on overcoming them. The Hebrew writer said, “Let us go on to perfection.” At times, we may need some help in seeing the importance of that effort.

We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.

To be a Christian means that we are continuing to grow. Never content with the progress we’ve made so far, we are always reaching for higher goals tomorrow. So we should not hesitate to say that the future will be the best of all.