p.10
The best our world has to offer is to teach you how to talk to yourself. Change what you tell yourself, and your feelings about what happened will change. Change your self-talk, and how you feel about yourself will change. Talk yourself out of getting upset about what you can't change. Do something constructive about what you can change. Those are the world's best efforts. It's a familiar but abnormal way to live.
- David Powlison
p. 20
Prayer is simply the medium through which we experience and connect to God.
p. 22
If God is sovereign, then he is in control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise, then he's not going to do everything I want because I don't know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take time to do all this. When we put all these things together - God's sovereignty, love, wisdom, and patience - we have a divine story.
Unanswered prayers create some of the tensions in the story God is weaving in our lives.
If God is composing a story with our lives, then our lives are no longer static. We aren't paralyzed by life; we can hope.
We dull our souls with the narcotic of activity. The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of the outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet.
p. 24
Love changes us. The second person of the Trinity, Jesus of Nazareth, now has a scarred body. The Trinity is different because of love.
