The End of Competition
Trust defines the meaning of living by grace rather than works… It's over for all huffing, puffing piety to earn God's favor; it's finished for all sweat-soaked straining to secure self-worth; it's the end of all competitive scrambling to get ahead of others in the game. 
The Fruitful Life
How can a poor tree bear good fruit? Only by grafting… We cannot tell how God has done his work in us, but it is done. We can do nothing and need do nothing to bring it about, for by the resurrection God has already done it. God has done everything. There is only one fruitful life in the world and that has been grafted into millions of other lives.
Freed from Sin's Power and Penalty
In Romans 6, Paul deals with the natural mind's tendency to misunderstand the grace of God. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase?"… The natural mind thinks, "If grace covers my sin, why not continue so that grace can be magnified?" Its definition of grace would be that grace frees me from the penalty of sin, so I can go satisfy myself with no fear of punishment. This is obviously tempting to those of us who experience the painful compulsion to indulge in addictive behaviors. But such an assumption is a total misunderstanding of the grace of God… The focus of God's grace is not just on the penalty of my sin, but my bondage to sin on this side of heaven. Grace did not come just to pay my penalty so I could live in the bondage of working sin. It came to set me free from the power of sin in self-consciousness in my own life and even from my bondage to those who have sinned against me… God desires not only to free you from the penalty of sin but to free you from the power of sin. That's why it is foolish to believe you can be a partaker of grace and continue on nonchalantly in a life of ungodliness.
You Are Not a Victim
Religion has played into the victim mentality because it's the easiest way to explain away failure. The church has not been effective in helping people overcome things like sickness and financial problems, so they fall into the sacred cow belief that God is allowing this for a reason. God isn't allowing the bad things in your life. The same power that raised Christ from the dead lives on the inside of every believer, and He is waiting on you to resist the devil and appropriate what He has already provided through Jesus.
Advice to a Vacillating Friend
You must not remain in this state. It will never do to be mean and beggarly to yourself. Stand upright, and look at yourself, and see if you were never meant to be like a toad under the harrow, afraid for your life either to move or to stand still. Do have a mind of your own. This is not a spiritual matter only, but one which concerns ordinary manliness. I would do many things to please my friends; but to go to hell to please them is more than I would venture. It may be very well to do this and that for good fellowship; but it will never do to lose the friendship of God in order to keep on good terms with men.
The Faithful Promise-Keeper
If a man has made me a promise, he cannot refuse to keep it on the ground that I am unworthy; because it is his own character that is at stake, not mine. However unworthy I am, he must not prove himself to be unworthy by failing to keep his word. "If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny himself." Everything hinges upon the character of the Promiser.
Fun Followers
Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We all ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is and being a Christian.
O Happy Day!
Too many people see the cross only as an act of divine justice. To satisfy his need for justice, God imposed the ultimate punishment on his Son, thus satisfying his wrath and allowing us to go unpunished. That may be good news for us, but what does it say about God?… His wrath wasn't an expression of the punishment sin deserves; it was the antidote for sin and shame… His plan was not just to provide a way to forgive sin, but to destroy it so that we might live free… Don't think God was only a distant spectator that day. He was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is something they did together. This was not some sacrifice God required in order to be able to love us, but a sacrifice God himself provided for what we needed. He leaped in front of a stampeding horse and pushed us to safety. He was crushed by the weight of our sin so that we could be rescued from it. It's an incredible story.
