What did you expect?

I recently started reading the book "What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage" by Paul Tripp. I've had it for a while but was wanting to finish another book before starting a new one. I just finished his other book "Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands" which was also excellent. This book is talking about several similar principles but is directing it towards marriage in particular.  Here are a couple of quotes that really stood out to me...

"Sin turns us in on ourselves. Sin makes us shrink our lives to the narrow confines of our little self-defined world. Sin causes us to shrink our focus, motivation, and concern to the size of our own wants, needs, and feelings. Sin causes all of us to be way too self-aware and self-important. Sin causes us to be offended most by offenses against us and to be concerned most for what concerns us. Sin causes us to dream selfish dreams and to plan self-oriented plans. Because of sin, we really do love us, and we have a wonderful plan for our own lives."

 

"We are drawn to order, predictability, comfort, ease, pleasure, appreciation, fun, and personal happiness. These things are not wrong in and of themselves, but they must not control us.  We struggle with God's plan because, at street level, we don't really want what God wants. We want what we want, and we want Him to deliver it. But that is not the plan. You see, God didn't give us His grace to make our kingdoms work; He gave us His grace to invite us to a much, much better kingdom!"