Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own.

You change your life by changing your heart.

If we think that this life is all there is to life, then there is no interpretation of our problems, our pain, not even of our privileges. But everything changes when we open up to the possibility that God's story is really our story too.

The glue that keeps Pride together is a 'heart of stone'. To resolve Pride is to acquire a 'heart of flesh' where humility can grow. Only God can provide you with a 'soft heart', one that can feel pain again and respond to it appropriately.

The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.

God is not troubled by one who is conservative or liberal, and He certainly never inclines His ear toward a donkey or an elephant.