If we practice for recognition, we already have our reward. But when we practice to form Jesus-like character, that reward is both now and forever. Our motive matters because we always reap what we sow.

Spiritual practices are not just the homework of the Christian life. They free the Spirit’s transforming power to flow through us and into the world.

We live in the story that best helps us make sense of the world. When we choose to inhabit the story of God’s people that’s been unfolding for thousands of years, we get to live as the much-loved children of God. Our spiritual practices help us become the person the story tells us we are.

The more we get our life from Christ, the more we can understand broken people just trying to get their core needs met in false ways. By the power of the Spirit, we can view others, even our enemies, the way Christ did, with compassion and hope for restoration rather than with judgment.

We tend to justify doing anything to our enemies except love, which only harms them and us. But loving our enemies is not just for them; it’s for us. Nothing transforms me more than loving people I don’t like or who don’t like me.

We want to retaliate against and resist those who interfere with our desires because we assume that violence solves problems. Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love must override and restrain our instinct for retaliation. Since love means “to will the good of another,” we can’t perpetrate violence against someone and love them at the same time.

Our first instinct is to respond to evil done to us with the same evil done to them. Jesus invites us to imagine a new way of being human that doesn’t plot revenge but reflects God’s generous love instead. Love creates ways to challenge evil without engaging in evil.

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We all pass on something we love to someone we love. Nothing is more important for us to give to the next generation than an understanding of who God is and how God loves. Since the love of God holds everyone and everything together, to leave this task undone is to fail at what matters most.