We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Rules for life: 1. Eagerly start the day’s main work. 2. Do not murmur at your busyness or the shortness of time, but buy up the time all around. 3. Never exaggerate duties by seeming to suffer under the load, but treat all responsibilities as liberty and gladness. 4. Never call attention to crowded work or trivial experiences. 5. Before confrontation or censure, obtain from God a real love for the one at fault. Know the facts; be generous in your judgment. Otherwise, how ineffective, how unintelligible or perhaps provocative your well-intended censure may be. 6. Do not believe everything you hear; do not spread gossip. 7. Do not seek praise, gratitude, respect, or regard for past service. 8. Avoid complaining when your advice or opinion is not consulted, or having been consulted, set aside. 9. Never allow yourself to be placed in favorable contrast with anyone. 10. Do not press conversations to your own needs and concerns. 11. Seek no favors, nor sympathies; do not ask for tenderness, but receive what comes. 12. Bear the blame; do not share or transfer it. 13. Give thanks when credit for your own work or ideas is given to another.
Edward Benson

When I speak of total depravity I do not mean that all men are as depraved as they possibly can be, nor that the depravity of their heart will always manifest itself equally in all respects at all times. Total depravity simply means that the whole of the individual, his heart, soul, spirit, and will, is affected by and enslaved to sin, thereby rendering him odious in the sight of God. What this means in terms of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that if left to himself a person will invariably, inevitably, and without pause reject the truth. Total depravity means that no matter how “civil” or “compassionate” or “industrious” or “law-abiding” he might otherwise be in his dealings with other people, he is utterly and willfully indisposed to all that Christ is and says. Merely preaching to that person will profit nothing.
Sam Storms