“Scripture calls us to crosses and sacrifices, but crosses and sacrifices tend to be where things die. I don’t like that. I want to avoid that.”- Bob Merritt “Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God — this […]
“We don’t like to be broken, and we work hard at maintaining the façade that we have it all together. But if we’re honest, part of what life does is break us. We get betrayed, hurt, stepped on, and shutout. We suffer heartaches and losses. And some days it feels a lot like despair.”- Bob […]
“If we don’t confront the naked truth, we’ll spend too much time and money on things that remain here on earth and not enough on the one thing that goes with us. Because ultimately the only thing you take with you into heaven is other people.”- Bob Merritt As Bob Merritt continues Chapter 10 of […]
“But God made us for friendship — with Himself first and then with others. So when these two kinds of friendship are missing or lacking, a void is left in our hearts that nothing but love from God and others can fill.”- Bob Merritt Then [Jesus] said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard […]
” . . . obedience requires actions. It’s not just having nice thoughts or having good intentions, or hoping something changes; obedience always involves doing things.”- Bob Merritt “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God’s working in you, giving you the desire and the […]
“We have everything we need to live in the flow of the new life and avoid the entanglements of the old. It’s there, it’s available, and we have the power to be done with anything that holds us back.”- Bob Merritt “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through […]
” . . . the new life is not a destination, a place you can get to and say, ‘I’m finally here.’ . . . The new life is really less of one thing and more of another. Even in the face of our natural predisposition to sin, we can make progress — get better […]
“But when we reach the end of our chase, weighed down by our loneliness, exhaustion, or shame, Jesus doesn’t scold or shame us. Rather, he sits by the well and says, ‘I can . . . give you a new kind of love, joy, peace, and happiness that you can’t get from any other person […]
” . . .. until heaven Christians will always face a certain amount of tension between the old and the new lives. The reality is there’s a constant tug-of-war between our sinful nature and God’s Spirit. We get pulled between these forces all day long, so it’s not uncommon to land in the middle.”- Bob […]
“We’re masters at living in the middle — between truth and dishonesty, generosity and selfishness, restraint and indulgence, new life and old life. But we love the middle. The middle sounds so nice, so accommodating . . .”- Bob Merritt In Chapter 7 (“The Middle is Miserable”) of Done With That, Bob Merritt reminds us […]
“When we delight ourselves in the Lord, He faithfully realigns our desires to be more in sync with His. Then one day we’ll wake up and realize that what we once craved no longer satisfies. Instead, we love what God loves.”- Bob Merritt “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is then one […]
” . . . we have to purify the stream. While we can’t completely block every negative influence bombarding our minds, we need a continual flow of biblical truth and goodness flooding into our lives to counter the negative.”- Bob Merritt And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what […]