Gaining the Kingdom doesn’t cost us anything. Receiving the Kingdom costs us everything. And it’s a happy trade-off. Everything we’ve ever longed for is inside. In his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

In J.I. Packer's book, Knowing God's Purpose for Your Life, he gives ten statements that help us discern God's call on our life. 

In all human history, God has not yet failed one person who has trusted in him. Will he fail you now?

We are complex beings. Ancient moments never forgotten shape and mold us into the men and women we are today. The slight grin of others when you were a kid and fell going down the stairs. The disappointment you caused your parents in an unexpected moment of weakness. Like Poe's raven, showing up on your evening doorstep, sins of your past haunt your present, destroying you piece by piece.

All Isaiah’s hearers had to do was listen and repent. But they couldn’t. Can you?

We may struggle through this life, but the marks we bear on our body will one day match the marks Jesus bore on his. And when we enter eternal life we will find, amazingly, we have the garment necessary for entrance into his kingdom.

Our churches should seek to fight the American pastime of loneliness. We want to push against the cultural call to isolation and push into the gospel call to loving our neighbor. The Christian life is hard enough as it is. Isolation makes it only harder.

The Christian life is not easy. It’s messy, bloody, sacrificial. It is a constant walking our sin toward the cross, offering the flesh, nailing it to the wood, and leaving it until it suffocates. It’s horrifyingly ugly and breathtakingly beautiful because it’s the same path that Jesus walked.

What is true freedom? In our day, everyone wants it, but no one can find it.

The biggest “Why?” question we must answer is this. Why are we reluctant to rest in God’s finished work? Why do we insist that we have our hand in our salvation? Why would we, who have never succeeded fully at anything in our lives, want to put our dirty hand into the purifying work of God?