“None of us ever gets to be in a relationship with a finished person [read: Jesus]. God’s redemptive work of change is ongoing in all our lives.
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When I fail to worship God as Savior, I am too casual about my sin and too focused on yours … When you are sinned against, you will be impacted by the weaknesses and failures of that other person. When this happens, you need to allow God to use you as an instrument in his redemptive hands, rather than seeking to make changes in the other person yourself.”
–Tim Lane, Chapter 6 of Relationships: A Mess Worth Making
“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it.
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Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Chapter 1 of Life Together
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