Despite all our guilt, all our wicked loves, and all of our hatred of His authority, and all our stone-cold deadness to His sweetness, and all our blindness to His glory, this grace saves us in every way from our own utter enslaving desire to not be saved from these things.

Consider the folly of a non-teleological human being, and a non-teleological cosmos—a man and a universe with no meaning, no purpose, no destiny, no design. It's absurd. An undesigned man living in an undesigned, un-purposed cosmos is set forth as if it were scientific objectivity, as if the study of the properties of matter can conclusively answer the ultimate questions of metaphysics. This is a guarantee that man is done with historic religion. And this is one of the reasons why there is going to be another Babylon, a new tower of Babel, so to speak. Why? Because to be left without absolute meaning results in man worshipping himself so that nothing outside of him authoritatively defines him. That's the present state of folly which our Western world has reached.

When we abide in Christ, there is power and nerve. And we will make it our ambition to please Christ first (2 Cor 5:9). The ambition to please Him is filled with the hope of favorably greeting Him at His return (1 Jn 2:28). Courage is a byproduct of living to please Christ. When Christ's approval towers over all other sources of approval, boldness is second nature. Those who live to please Christ have the judgment seat of Christ etched upon their consciousness (2 Cor 5:9-10).