"The great goal of God is not to make us successful servants. The great goal of God is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.... Your comfort, your joy, your peace comes from your performance and what you can do for God. My comfort, my joy, my peace, comes from what God has done for me in the finished work of Christ! God will not allow your source to be anything but Him and grace....[He makes you] begin to see that you can do nothing, and absolutely everything depends on Him....
I've spent a great part of my Christian life working myself to death so that somehow God would think I was special... [But now] I know that I am deeply and eternally and perfectly loved. If God wants me to go do something, I'll go do something because he loves me so much. But I don't need to be big, I don't need to be smart, I don't need to be eloquent, I don't need a tremendous ministry, and I don't need to be well known. God loves ME, and that is enough.
The greatest act of faith is for me to look in the mirror of God's Word and see all my faults, all my sin, all my shortcomings, and to believe that God loves me exactly as He says He does." - Paul Washer
