Don’t settle for sermons that reduce the Biblical narrative to an Idiots’ Guide to everything. The key theme of the Word is redemption from the guilt and power of sin, through faith in Christ, by grace alone, for the glory of God. Everything else is secondary. Pray for preaching that exalts the grace of Jesus and condemns sin for what it is.

Mere aspirations are the impoverished brood of cowardice and sloth; they live quietly and die in obscurity, if it may be said they lived all. The noble offspring of courage and action, however, which is resolve, may be raised amid anguish and tutored by opposition, but when it is fully grown, inherits greatness.

Yesterday came suddenly.” Even Paul McCartney was forced to confront the brevity and absurdity of a life lived apart from faith in Jesus Christ. In just a few years your whole life is passed and gone, and for what? He wrote, “Suddenly, I’m not half to man I used to be, There’s a shadow hanging over me. Oh, yesterday came suddenly.” Are you ready for the tomorrow that follows this life?

True peace of heart is possible only after the cross becomes the standard by which one judges all his circumstances. The most blessed life may be construed as an elaborate trap set to destroy a man, if he does not accept that God has proven unchanging favor by sending His Son to die for him.

My sin seems an abyss yawning to devour the whole universe. The heavens, they are finite; but my sin comes against the infinite God, and is therefore an immeasurably expansive evil stretching like the elastic jaws of a snake. I shudder and tremble, but then I behold the crucifix spanning even further, resting firmly as a joist sits over a well. From this cross Jesus descended into the watery depths, down and down. Yes, and at the bottom of this pit he left an empty tomb opening like a drain to receive and seal away all my sins, swallowing them into a still larger abyss, a vast and fathomless ocean of mercy. In the resurrection I discover a vacuum stronger than death.

Each day I fall short, neglecting the everlasting enterprise of the eschaton for endless entertainments of earth. My mind is more preoccupied with work than worship; profits than prayer; with play above piety; preferring the path of an earthly champion above the portion of charity, character, and the cross of Christ. Each day and every hour I need new grace, renewing grace, to continue upward in the Christian way.

It is not wrong to desire all good things, but only good things by bad means or wrong timing. The Word does not count it covetous to want that which we can procure by God’s means for His glory. In fact, we are told to pray for and act within our power to attain the goods we yearn for.