gospel

We are changed not by being told what we need to do for God, but by hearing the news about what God has done for us.

The mission that Jesus invites us to participate in is primarily a relational one in nature. Our ability to sustain our relationship in a meaningful way will have a direct impact on our missional fruitfulness.

None of us is beyond the task of missions...The question is not whether or not we will be working to spread the gospel around the world, but what role we will play in this.

The secret of gospel change is being convinced that Jesus is the good life and the fountain of joy. Any alternative we might choose would be the letdown.

What can we do to win these men to Christ?

The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been had all transgressors been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God, than for the whole race to suffer.

Be prepared to die to self and to give up everything for the Gospel__ sake, even to give up the most precious thing you have, your life.

To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.

There is nothing in the world or the Church _ except the church's disobedience _ to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.

Luther__ doctrine of justification depends upon two things: the constant preaching of the wrath of God in the face of sin; and the realization that every Christian is at once righteous and a sinner, thus needing the hammer of the law to terrify and break the sinful conscience.

Go, send, or disobey.

To know God and to make Him known.

We can reach our world, if we will. The greatest lack today is not people or funds. The greatest need is prayer.

Repetition and familiarity work. What is repeated becomes familiar, and this becomes a part of us. Our own culture understands this, but alas, not always the church. Far too many equate ritual with spiritual dryness. True, ritual and liturgy can be dead--even using the terms can raise hackles--but only when the significance and power of those rituals are forgotten. Spiritual death is not a property of ritual itself. To the contrary, ritual has always been and will always be a means of securing for future generations the power and reality of the gospel." (Peter Enns, Exodus, page 262).

To let the gospel of Jesus shape how we work means to heed the influence of both the psychological idols within our hearts as well as the sociological idols in our culture and profession.

The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion - it is something else altogether. Religion makes law and moral obedience a means of salvation, while irreligion makes the individual a law to him - or herself. The gospel, however, is that Jesus takes the law of God so seriously that He paid the penalty of disobedience, so we can be saved by sheer grace.

I thank God for schools that are serious about the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are vital to perpetuating our faith through your generation and beyond.

We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure in which we have received it.