God’s heart is moved, not when we protest our innocence by pointing to our (inadequate) good works, nor when we promise that we will do better in the future. Though there is no reason for God to love us, yet he does. Until we recognize that there is no reason God will be moved to loves us other than the spiritual need we acknowledge, we have no good news to tell others or ourselves…Biblical faith is most evident not when we demand that God honor our flawed deeds, but when we trust that he will mercifully respond when we humbly and helplessly cry out, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!

Those who cry out in desperation have more hope of moving God’s heart than any who would trophy their own righteousness before him…

To experience God’s grace, I must readily confess my own hopeless condition..it is my desperation that inclines God’s heart toward my own.

-Holiness By Grace, Bryan Chapell (pg. 27-28)