From Ray Ortlund

In a world of secrets, outward success is everyone’s goal. If we can just succeed, we won’t have to face ourselves. No wonder that doesn’t work. It can’t work. The reality of what we are will always topple this house-of-cards persona we so earnestly wish were true.
The gospel is not God’s way of giving us an even better self-improvement goal. The gospel is God’s judgment on our better selves and his replacement of it all with Jesus.
Every one of us thinks, “If only I could do __________ or be __________, then I would arrive.” So, what does “arrival” look like to you? If it isn’t Jesus, the risen Lord himself, every arrival you achieve is only another set-back.
If you make financial security your arrival, you are already trapped in anxiety. If you make a thin body your identity, you will hate yourself more. If you make a porn-free life your okayness, you are doomed to compulsion. God’s remedy for you is not more money or better looks or perfect control. God’s gift to you is Jesus. With Jesus, we are saved. Everything is going to be okay. Without Jesus, we are damned. Nothing will go right.
Forsake all fraudulent success. Make Jesus your goal, your arrival, your identity, your comfort, your okayness, and he’ll gladly give himself to you — and on terms of grace. But reach for anything else, and it will turn into its opposite and betray you.
To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “I’ve lost everything, and I don’t even care, because now I get Jesus” (Philippians 3:8).

How Shall I Be Right With God?

"...an answer to the greatest personal question ever asked by a human soul – the
question, “How shall I be right with God? How do I stand in God’s sight? With
what favor does he look upon me?” There are those, I admit, who never raise that
question; there are those who are concerned with the question of their standing
before men but never with the question of their standing before God; there are
those who are interested in what “people say” but not in the question of what God
says. Such men, however, are not those who move the world; they are apt to go
with the current; they are apt to do as others do; they are not the heroes who
change the destinies of the race. The beginning of true nobility comes when a
man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men and becomes interested in the
judgment of God."  - J. Gresham Machen

A Universal Problem

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
  “None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  (Romans 3:9-18 ESV)
Paul tells us in Romans 3 that our sin is a UNIVERSAL problem... "None is righteous - not even one." He pulls together the Psalms to let us know that it is an age old problem, not just a problem for Paul's time, but before his time; and as we know from our own lives, long after... He addresses the Romans (and us) through carefully selected Psalms to show us that every area of life is infected by our sin.
First: He focuses on the heart (what we are) (vv. 10-12) - we've turned from God

Next: He focuses on the tongue (what we say) (vv. 13-14) - we are hostile to truth and our words show it...
Lastly: He focuses on the feet (what we do) (vv. 15-18)  - our actions...the way of death and violence, misery, and ruin our words bring to others. 
A self seeking heart leads to a bitter tongue, and a bitter tongue leads strife in the world around us.  As Christians we are not to engage in bitter words that create strife, and when we do, we need to repent.
Who and what we are revealed in what we say and what we do... Only God's grace can save us.  It's the only remedy from what we are..Trust in Christ's payment for your sin today.

Great New Year Advice... Shut Up!

“We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ the confessional answer is shocking: ‘Nothing! Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!’”
Gerhard O. Forde, Justification by Faith (Philadelphia, 1983), page 22.