Here are some loose strands for our growth:

Living From Approval, Not For Approval – Dave Harvey
Let me ask you a question: What do you think God feels about you right now? Irritation over your flaws — that tendency towards gluttony, or your inconsistency to getting up each morning to pray? Does God want to withdraw due to our failures — the impatient word with a wife or child; the angry outburst provoked by someone cutting you off on the freeway? Does he look down with a cosmic frown of disapproval on you, so prone to wander and full of weakness?

Love (All) Your Neighbors: A Surprising Test of True Faith – Scott Hubbard (DG)
So, if you want to see someone’s spiritual sincerity more clearly, don’t mainly watch him in church. Watch him with his children. Watch him at work. Watch him in traffic. Watch him when offended. For you will know him by his neighbor-love.

Can We Forgive When the Offender Doesn’t Repent? – Mike Wittmer (TGC)
Forgiveness means to pardon an offender by paying/absorbing his moral debt. When an offender repents, it’s clear we should both pay and pardon. We absorb the moral cost of being sinned against and assure the offender of our forgiveness. When the offender doesn’t repent for whatever reason—perhaps he’s hard-hearted or has died—we must separate the payment from the pardon. We don’t pardon him (and gloss over his offenses), because he hasn’t repented, yet we still must absorb the moral cost.

The Desecration of Man – Carl Trueman (First Things)
Contra Nietzsche, God is not dead. But we moderns have used Nietzsche’s claim as an excuse for desecrating man, for turning ourselves and others into insignificant, sexualized, animate lumps of meat. Only a reclamation, and a proclamation, of the living God in the vital worship of the Church will consecrate man and bring him back from the brink of a nihilistic, dehumanized abyss.

Flashback: Gentle Discipline
Paul is weary of Corinthians, who are like wayward children, and yet he wants to treat them with gentleness. He doesn’t want to come with a rod, but with gentle love. Notice he doesn’t demand, command, or threaten. But clothed with the gentleness of Christ, he entreats, he urges, he beseechs, he appeals to them. His discipline is gentle.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day worshiping God with your local church!