I read the following expert the past couple of days from the book Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller, and it's really stuck with me, enough so that I keep going back to it.

Galatians 5:19-21 (The Message)
19It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; ²⁰trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; ²¹the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.

One of the big themes that I've taken from this book is around the idea of where we get our identidy from: Who really tells us who we are in this world. He uses this lifeboat metaphor as an example of how we line people up on either side of us to figure out where we stand in line. I'm faaar from perfect, and can be the epitomy of what Paul's talking about in Galatians 5 above in terms of getting my own way. Every now and then, more and more frequently over the past 12 years, I get glimpses of who I am in God's eyes, and short-term it changes me, and leaves a mark long term, bringing me closer and closer to where I want to be.

The author, Donald Miller, goes on to add:

Imagine how a man's life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by God? He could interact with the poor and now show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money ecause money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.