The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are precious to me not because they turn my life into a string of successes but because they keep me from collapsing under my string of failures (John Piper, Radical Effects of the Resurrection).

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Some professing Christians . . . are given to a grievous censorious and critical attitude toward everything and everybody. As one man I knew has said, “Some people are born in the objective case, the contrary gender and the bilious mood.”. . . For one to profess to know Christ and have real religion and at the same time to manifest a sour, critical, negative attitude is disgusting and ab­horrent even to the ungodly. Certainly anyone with such an unsavory nature could never hope to be a “savour of life unto life” (Bill Piper, Dead Men Made Alive).