“The gospel shows us that our spiritual problem lies not only in failing to obey God, but also in relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, ourselves and others.
Every kind of character flaw comes from this natural impulse to be our own savior through our performance and achievement. On the one hand, proud and disdainful personalities come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. But on the other hand, discouraged and self-loathing personalities also come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are failing.
Belief in the gospel is not just the way to enter the kingdom of God; it is the way to address every obstacle and grow in every aspect. The gospel is not just the “ABCs” but the “A-to-Z” of the Christian life.
The gospel is the way that anything is renewed and transformed by Christ — whether a heart, a relationship, a church, or a community. All our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel. Put positively, the gospel transforms our hearts, our thinking and our approach to absolutely everything.”
- Timothy Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: Living in Line with the Truth of the Gospel (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), 2.
Beauty and Rest
We’re in the Keys. We’re here for some family time, reading, fishing and just resting. Last night we caught about a dozen mangrove snapper which we will grill and eat tonight. Tomorrow we go out to snorkel on Looe reef/key. Looking at the beauty of God’s creation I keep thinking that creation is beautiful because God is glorious!
We’ve brought a lot of good books and hope to find a rhythm between reading, resting and playing.
I’m sorry I’m going to miss hearing Tim Rice at church on Sunday. He’s the pastor of Trinity PCA in Lakeland. He’s known as a speaker who is Scriptural, Christ-centered and honest. Trinity PCA is about the same size as Christ Community and they have already planted three church basically using the same model that we are using. He’s going to speak from Acts 13 about churches multiplying through church planting and share some of their lessons learned and experiences gained in the process. This is a great opportunity for us to hear from someone who has been there and is excited about continually planting churches, which is exactly what we believe God is leading us to do.
I was thinking about “the word of His grace” that we spoke of in the last sermon and the recent post on preaching the gospel to yourself. Here’s another quote along the same lines by Tim Keller who speaks of the gospel as the “A-Z” of the Christian life.
Larry is the senior pastor at 
