God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Love is motivated by the joy of sharing our fullness, but the works of the flesh are motivated by the desire to fill our emptiness... [The flesh is] man’s ego which feels a deep emptiness and uses the means within its own power to fill that emptiness. If it is religious, it may use law; if it is irreligious, it may use booze... [Yet] when God frees us from guilt and fear and greed and fills us with His all-satisfying presence, the only motive left is the joy of sharing our fullness.
Many of us, I think, fear that doctrine will simply become the dead wood of orthodoxy in our church, and so we cut it out whenever we can. In fact, doctrine is the fuel God has given us that, when lit by the fires of grace, burns in a white-hot devotion of Christian worship and discipleship.