Our goal as a Christian isn't to "get to heaven." Rather, our goal is to know God-- and learn to love Him.

Agape is the Greek word for love, and the Agape Road is just that-- a road of love that God created to bring us to Himself.

We can live through self-effort, or we can live through humility and dependence. Grace doesn't just save us, it empowers us to live the life God designs.

God is the river of life within us. He desires to pour out His love, His blessings, and His life. 

We want to live in such a way that we remove any boulders from block the flow of the river, thereby allowing God to do a work to us as well as though us.

Forgiveness is an act of obedience. It is not a feeling... it is a choice. And, it doesn't depend on fairness. In fact, the very need for forgiveness acknowledges someone did something that wasn't right.

We're commanded to forgive. And, when we forgive it opens the door for God to forgive us our sins as well.

Disobedience causes us to come out of spiritual alignment. Almost every failure in life can be traced soon or later to breaking of this one commandment: "Honor your father and mother..."

God gave this commandment to Moses, and it is repeated throughout the New Testament. 

Faith is a confidence or trust that we place in a person or thing. It is a belief that is not based on proof. 

For Christians, faith is relational-- and essential in our relationship with the Lord.

A hardened heart can cause spiritual blindness, not only to the unbeliever but to Christians. We can become indoctrinated with theology and miss the truth the Holy Spirit is trying to reveal to us. A hardened heart keeps us from seeing our sin. When God opens the eyes and ears of our heart, we begin to feel and see conviction for sin.

One of the most common maladies throughout the world, performance orientation is simply a striving to perform for others in order to gain approval. 

In Christians, performance orientation is rooted in an inability to believe God can love us unless we work for it. In other words, we seek to earn His love rather than receiving it by grace.

Abandonment is the act of being left of severely neglected. 

It can contain all of our losses, disconnections, and disappointments-- from our earliest years. And, it can make us more susceptible to heartbreak as an adult when we find ourselves abandoned. 

The abandonment wound, stored in the limbic brain, is easily triggered and can cause core fears to erupt, leaving the strongest among us feeling desperate and dependent. 

Denial is the refusal to admit the truth or reality of something-- it could even be about a person or a thing. It's also a defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality. 

A defense mechanism, denial can protect our wound from further harm, but at the same time it can serve as a block which prevents or hinders the light of Christ from penetrating and healing the wound.

What we judge in other people comes back on us. In this, we see the Belief-Expectation Cycle enter. This principle is at work at all times-- both positively and negatively. 

A soul tie is a covenant binding two people together. God honors all covenants-- good and bad. 

Soul ties can be parent to child, spouse to a spouse or a person to a friend or even a "thing."

These ties create an emotional and spiritual connection that can be honored and blessed by God or controlling and not blessed by God.