A Faith Worth Sharing: Week 1

This podcast is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. You are listening to our Sunday school series entitled A Faith Worth Sharing.

I'm really excited. We covered this a little bit yesterday, which is basically about creating an evangelistic culture or dynamic. A lot of times people think evangelism is having gospel conversations, but evangelism is the whole process. And it starts with us enjoying Jesus. If we don't have renewal dynamics—if we're not enjoying the love of Jesus—then the rest of the stuff we do is a waste of time.

Our Christian life is fundamentally designed to enjoy our sonship and enjoy the grace of God. As we do so and rediscover our missional identity—where God has sent us into a world where we live, work, play, and serve to be his ambassadors—that fuels us to cultivate deep, meaningful friendships with people in our communities who don't know Christ. And as we do that together in community, when we use our homes to deepen those friendships and shared interests, eventually it leads to conversations.

What we talked about yesterday is that this process takes about two to three years before someone comes to Christ. So what we're going to camp out on this morning is one of the renewal dynamics modules, which I think is fundamental for us enjoying the grace of God.

If I have your attention, let's pray.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for your kindness, your mercy. Lord Jesus, we're getting to talk about the gospel this morning, and we don't want to be inoculated from it. So, Holy Spirit, would you help us to have fresh eyes to see afresh and anew what we have in Jesus? Lord Jesus, would you use this time in pivotal ways to activate our ability to preach the gospel to our hearts and enjoy you richly? We pray this in your blessed name, Jesus. Amen.

Designed to Delight in Jesus

Fundamentally, in the Christian life, we're designed to delight in Jesus, to absolutely enjoy his rich grace. Jesus invaded us by his Holy Spirit, literally took over residence inside of us, and has given us a spirit which is crying out, "Abba Father," so that we can join the spirit and enjoy our Father in heaven.

When you go from cover to cover in Scripture, one of the main themes that shows up over and over is we're supposed to delight in our God. The psalmist said this:

Taste and see that the Lord is good. — Psalm 34

The grace of God is not supposed to be this kind of intellectual thing, but an existential experience where we richly enjoy his presence in our life and can taste and enjoy his goodness.

Peter put it this way:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy. — 1 Peter 1:8

The way the New Testament patterns the Old Testament here is beautiful. The apostle Peter is saying this gospel is supposed to light us up on the inside. It's supposed to lead to an inexpressible joy we can't even begin to put words to. So much so that when the church in Galatia lost that joy, Paul was like, "Woah, woah, woah. What happened to all your joy?" In other words, you're supposed to have this inexpressible joy that's bubbling up in your hearts.

The Challenge We Face

Now this is starting to create a problem for a lot of us in the room right now. We're all thinking, "Woah. You lost me at delight. I'm supposed to delight in God? I'm supposed to taste and see that he's good? I'm supposed to have this inexpressible joy? What happened?"

I think this is the challenge a lot of us just have to engage this morning. Not all of us are in the same place, but some of us are like, "Really, I'm not experiencing joy in the gospel this morning. Actually, I probably haven't experienced glorious joy in the gospel for a while. What do I do?"

This is the reality most Christians find themselves in. There's this season where they discover Jesus for the first time. They're like, "Oh my gosh. This is incredible." And then a couple years later, they're showing up for Sunday school and going, "Man, I haven't felt that fire in a very long time."

So one of the challenges a lot of us have in this room is apathy. We get in these ruts. We go through these dynamics or fault cycles, hoping we'll be able to reignite that fire for Jesus, and it just doesn't happen. So we settle into this apathy and we're just like, "You know, God loves me, but I guess I'm okay with just not experiencing it on a regular basis." And then we kind of intellectualize our faith and we're hoping that will work, and yeah, it's not very fun.

Another thing we begin to discover is that a lot of us don't have the fellowship we need to really activate those dynamics for us to enjoy Jesus to continue.

I mentioned this yesterday, but college was the last time I found it easy to stay in shape. A, because the gym was like 100 meters away from my dorm. B, I had multiple guys in the dorm hall who wanted to lift with me, so it was always easy to find a workout partner. And it's amazing when you just have someone else to work out with how much easier it is to work out.

Now, the Christian life's designed to be like that. Right? Fellowship is having an intimate missional partnership. It's about having another believer in your life or a group of believers in your life completely dedicated to loving you and loving the lost together. And so when you have other believers in your life pushing you to enjoy the gospel, it kinda works. I.E, when you're not activated and experiencing the joy of the gospel, there's that other sister or brother in front of you preaching the gospel to you, helping you to meditate on the gospel, reminding you of who you are in Christ until that pilot light kicks off again and starts taking over your hearts.

So question for us to get going this morning is despite our access to amazing resources in North America, why do we still have so little gospel joy?

The room identified several reasons: unmet expectations and disappointment for the Christian faith, distractions, the hurrying pace of our life here in RDU, and idols. But let's get more particular to the ones that we share here. It's socially uncomfortable, generally, to express gospel joy. It's socially unacceptable to express gospel joy here. Isn't that weird? But it's true. Like, when you see someone lit up on Jesus, you're like, dude, chill out. You're making us all look bad. And we do it subtly, though.

We can get stuck in really bad patterns. Your worst enemy in joining Jesus is a comfort and ease that we have such easy access to. We're meant to enjoy Jesus in the midst of hardship and suffering and persecution, in the struggle of living the Christian life, and if we want to, we can disengage from all of that if we have a middle class and above lifestyle. If you wanna check out, you can. If you wanna make something easier, you can. And then to make that comfort thing even worse is we get to be isolated atoms here in the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill area. And so if someone's struggling, that's not your problem, and you get to check out. And the Christian life was never meant to be experienced like that.

Talking to Ourselves

There's a lot of challenges that are permeating our heart right now, keeping us from experiencing joy. I just wanna repeat something for those who weren't here yesterday.

I say we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ourselves to talk to us. You know what that means. I suggest that the whole trouble of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow ourselves to talk to us instead of talking to ourselves. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

It's amazing the sheer amount of negative messages that populate your heart on a regular basis. Some of you are self loathers. The amount of condemnation you give yourself is immense. And so the negative messages that constantly populate, you just kinda receive, and you just kinda let stay there.

What we're about to see from the scriptures is God invites us to actually wage war against those negative messages, not to be content with all the unbelief that's floating around your head, but actually addressing all that unbelief with the gospel itself. The psalmist, you know, Psalm 42 popularizes this.

Why you downcast, O my soul, put your hope in the Lord? — Psalm 42

You're supposed to battle with your heart. In today's world, we don't know how to deal with all those negative messages that are populated. And what we're about to do this morning is to experience two tools that'll help us to identify those negative messages and the unbelief that is attacking and waging war with your soul, and how to meditate on the gospel and to address those dynamics.

So what are those false narratives populating in your head? I remember when I was a brand new church planter, I noticed this negative message lines up with a lot of entrepreneurs.

When I was a brand new church planter, I was trying to do something kind of unique in Carrboro, and it wasn't going so well. Suddenly, all these negative messages populated my mind: You can't do this. No one's gonna follow you. You're over your head. I couldn't shake those negative messages.

Was it spiritual warfare? Sure. Was it my flesh? Absolutely. Was it unbelief? Yes. It was probably all of the above.

But that wasn't just the beginning of it. Then I had certain perpetual sin in my life that I just couldn't kick or repent of. And then I was just like, you're a fraud. If you really love Jesus, you wouldn't keep repeating these sins. You must really not enjoy Jesus. I mean, there's so many negative messages.

Some of them have stuck with me, some of them haven't. As some go away, new ones grow up. We all have unbelief that attacks us on a regular basis. The question is: do we slow down long enough in fellowship to identify those false narratives together, and then help each other with those false narratives by rejoicing in the gospel?

Identifying False Narratives

So what are your false narratives? I know we don't have that kind of relationship yet, but there might be some versions of your false narratives you're willing to share. Maybe not your top five, but you'll go to your bottom five. What are some false narratives floating around your head?

That I messed something up. Yes, that one gets us all the time, especially in this area. If you don't make enough or have enough degrees, you're less than. I'm not enough. I am what I do. I'm supposed to be able to do all things. I don't belong here. Is Jesus really true? The impostor syndrome on any level.

These are great—I mean, they're not great, but they're great. Thanks for engaging and being honest. This is just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it?

The Work of Faith

If we're to ever slow down and start writing out our top ten, it takes about fifteen minutes to actually get really honest with ourselves to get to those core four or five. If we don't actually identify those and begin to address them with the gospel, we're never gonna have joy. Faith is tackling those unbelieving false narratives with the gospel until we actually rejoice in our identity in Christ.

I'm gonna give you a framework. Let me share the second half of the DeMarco Jones quote with you.

The whole art in spiritual living is knowing how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself, and then you must go on to remind yourself of God—who God is, what God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do.

What stands out to you from this quote?

I like the visual of taking yourself in hand. All I can think of is a four-year-old little boy that you're trying to talk to, and you just literally have to hold on to them to keep them engaged. It's a great image.

It's very active. I have to do things. Yes. Getting your identity in Christ is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. It takes a tremendous amount of work. If you wanna deal with your false narratives and enjoy Jesus, you gotta work your tail off.

I believe everyone else had it figured out, but I was the only one. You show up on Sunday like, man, everyone else got this figured out. I don't. The reality is everyone in the room is thinking about it. No one's got it figured out.

Learning Your Soul

I want from my young people and pretty much everyone I love—to learn how to handle yourself. And it's an art. This takes lots of time to figure out. The terrain of your soul is pretty treacherous, and you gotta learn your way around those false narratives and hard turns so you know actually how to engage it and preach the gospel to it. This is the hardest battle you will fight every day. And most of us just kind of lay down every morning.

So how can we do this? If we learn how to meditate on the gospel and become fluid on it, it can create a dynamic in our hearts that lead to joy. And so I'm just going to keep repeating myself a couple of times here.

If there's going to be real change in your life, your head, your hands, and your heart all have to be activated. So if you have real power, a new paradigm, there's gonna be some ideas that are new that are floating around your head. You have to apply those ideas and experience them.

So an example of this is how do you know if you're reading the Bible well? Well, if you read and have a bunch of cool ideas going in your head, that's not it. If you applied what you learned that morning, okay, you're getting closer. If you read something, applied something, experienced the Holy Spirit, and all those things happen, something beautiful just happened in your life. So I'm about to give you a tool. And some of you are gonna be like, man, that was really cool and want to stay up here. And you're not gonna change. Some of you are gonna be like, okay, Rude just yelled at me three times in a row. I'm gonna have to apply this. But it's not till we apply and experience it that we've actually had real transformation and change.

The Biblical Foundation for Meditation

So, quick biblical foundation for the tool we're going through. Someone just read this out real fast.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, in whose light is in the law of the Lord, and on this law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which he willeth fruit in season and whose sleep does not weep. Whatever he does, prospers. — Psalm 1

Awesome. So what's the big idea here? Say it. Say it louder. Meditate. Yes. Delightful meditation is the description of the person who prospers. The person who delightfully meditates on God's law. Well, how often? Day and night. Because that's what the war requires. This is not an abstract idea from the Lord. This is like, hey, man. If you're gonna win the war in your heart, learn to meditate—delightfully meditate on the Word from the Lord.

Tim Keller. I don't work for him anymore, but I still can't find people to replace these beautiful ideas of his. So someone read this one for me:

Meditation on scripture is pondering, relishing, imagining, applying, rehearsing God's truth until it becomes real to the heart and permanently affects your attitude and behavior.

Dude, isn't this money? It's incredible. Like when he died, I was just like, where am I gonna get these quotes moving forward? It was such a gift to the church. What stands out to you from this idea of meditation? There's a lot to meditation. Yes, it's very comforting. Yeah, it's ongoing. It's not one step. Yes, good. And what's required of you to do meditation? Time. Persistence. This is good. Keep going. Yeah, your imagination. Do you know how hard it is to engage your imagination to something? We're used to like, okay, I've got to read my Bible in the morning. I have a reading plan. That's not necessarily engaging your imagination. Meditation, you have to literally slow down and stop and engage your whole self so you're actually really thinking it through until your imagination gets activated. Because once your imagination's activated, something deep within you has been activated. And if that part of you starts engaging the grace of God, there's transformation. But until your imagination's activated, until you're rehearsing these ideas, until you personalize, until the words have become your own, you're not going to change.

So like, in college, I had this guy discipling me. He was a college intern at the Church of Good Shepherd. His name was Jonathan Inman. And we were getting pizza at this place. And my theology as a college sophomore was impeccable. I was getting into reformed theology in all the wrong ways. And he pulled me aside. He was like, okay, Roop, your theology is like mathematics. I can ask you a question, and you can actually, for a college sophomore, give me a phenomenal definition. The problem is your theology needs to be like this pizza pie, this piece of pie. It's something you devour and eat. Your life won't change until your theology goes from mathematics to a piece of pie that you're devouring. Best thing he ever said to me. Because he was right. I wasn't enjoying and feasting on God's beautiful gospel truths. I was just memorizing the mathematics of it. And there's a huge difference between knowing the mathematics of the grace of God and devouring it and enjoying it. They're two different languages.

So I referenced this earlier:

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why are you so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. — Psalm 42:5

So our job is when we're downcast, which is usually all the time, right, and filled with unbelief, is to engage our soul, or like a four year old, grab her by the hand, and begin to address your downcastness with the gospel.

We have to minister it to our troubled hearts. And how long do we do it? Until our hearts grow hot within us.

One Puritan I particularly enjoyed reading was Thomas Watson. He had tons of analogies, and one on meditation really won me over. He said: imagine you're wandering through the forest on a hike, and you get soaking wet from a rainstorm. Then you come across a warm fire. How long do you stay by the warm fire? Well, until it warms you up and you're dry. Then, paraphrasing him: "Beloved child of God, take your dreary cold soul to the fires of the gospel, and stay by them until they warm you through."

What do we do with the gospel? We stay by it until it warms us up.

A Personal Story: Rediscovering Jesus

I'm going to give you a tool, but first, a two-minute backstory. When I was a church planter, I burned out about three years in. I had technical success—over 100 people, a couple of elders, a balanced budget. It was pretty exciting, I'll tell you. I didn't have to worry about whether my paycheck was going to come in. But it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. More importantly, I realized the gospel I had a reputation for articulating wasn't something I was really treasuring and enjoying. Tim Keller's my hero, and I could parrot him in my sermons, but I didn't have the music playing in my heart. I was burning out, and I knew something was fundamentally wrong with how I was enjoying Jesus and living the Christian life.

So I went to a couple different mentors and asked, "What do I do?" They said, "Rue, I'm glad you're here now. This is a great time to rediscover Jesus and actually enjoy him."

And so I started reading the scriptures and slowly meditating on the gospel. Every time I came across a promise, I highlighted my Bible. I slowed down and tried to engage my imagination with it. Over time, I discovered all these promises in the Bible and started categorizing them. I created a table around 2006 or 2007, and I began to realize the gospel is past tense, present tense, and future tense.

I made this cool little table and chart, and I went to Jonathan, my mentor. I said, "This is a really cool chart, isn't it?" He said, "Yeah, whatever." Then he said, "Rue, I'm going to give you the best piece of advice I can give you. Don't do this really fast. Just do one a week."

I said, "One a week?"

He said, "Yeah. How long will it take you to memorize something?"

I said, "I don't know, a minute for a verse."

He said, "Great. And then spend the rest of the week treasuring it until it becomes real to you, and then move on to the next one." He also gave me other great advice: take your birthday week off, take Christmas off, take vacation off. Just slowly do it.

Over the course of a year, I memorized and meditated on these 40 gospel promises. What do you think it did to me? Joy. Yes, it made it real. It turned my imagination. It gave me tools to fight negative thoughts. When I started having those negative narratives, the Holy Spirit brought to mind all these promises. Instead of coming into that battle unarmed, I started coming with all these promises freshly, newly populating my heart in real and meaningful ways. This, probably more than anything else, radically changed my life.

When I started preaching the gospel on Sundays, it wasn't mimicking Tim Keller. It was coming out of my own fresh enjoyment of the richness of God's grace. When I was hanging out with family members or friends or people in the church in need of shepherding, I wasn't trying to sound like Tim Keller. I was looking at them and saying, "No, you're loved." And they could feel the conviction in my heart. It changed everything for me. It actually gave me the power to replant my church and clean it up.

There was a year we went from 100 to 40 to 120. One calendar year. The coolest journey I ever went through. But I realized I messed up in planting my church. I sold out. I let the standards go down. It was all my fault. So I went to everyone and repented for being a bad leader, saying, "All I'm doing is going back to the original vision." We lost eighty-six people in about eight weeks. We went down to 40. I had so much joy. It was crazy. And then that next six months, we shot up to 120. Why? Probably for the first time in my life, to my shame, we actually centered around the gospel.

And the only reason I had the courage to do that was for about a year or two, what I was doing was meditating on the gospel. And I finally had enough faith and joy to exceed my fear and instability, and we went after it. It was the coolest experience I've ever gone through in my life.

Friends, you have real challenges in front of you right now, whether it comes to work, your marriage, your kids, your in-laws, your neighborhood. Tons of unbelief weighing you down. Obstacles you have no idea how to get beyond. The only thing that's gonna get you through this is meditating on the gospel. Friends, when your unbelief shows up, can you preach the gospel to your hearts?

Friends, before the creation of the world, your God knew you and loved you. He planned to send his son to die for you. He chose you out of darkness and death. He ransomed you back with his own life. He gave you his righteousness, his glory, his weight, his essence. He gave you his Holy Spirit to invade your life, to seal you, to secure you, to fill you up.

Right now, Jesus is praying for you and interceding on your behalf. Right now, the Holy Spirit is praying on your behalf. Right now, the Holy Spirit is helping you to behold Jesus. Right now, the Holy Spirit is giving you fresh faith, fresh joy, fresh repentance. You have the fullness of God residing inside of you right now. That God will hold you safe and secure till he can make you whole.

The greatest day coming for you is the greatest banquet that will ever happen of all time—Isaiah 25 talks about the marriage supper of the Lamb, where Jesus is gonna have the largest banquet table of history. There'll be billions of people around it. And he at the head of that table is gonna start singing over you and delighting over you and give you his world. And that day, you will never sin again. You will never experience shame again. You will never experience unbelief again.

Friends, are you rejoicing in that dear gospel? Are you preaching that gospel to your heart? This is the war. This is what the Christian life boils down to: you meditating on the gospel until it captured your imagination and applying those gospel messages against those negative narratives that are populating your hearts.

So we'll get to this later. You don't have to use my table. But friends, will you make a chart of the best gospel promises you can find in the scriptures, and will you meditate on them?

The Power of Gospel Meditation

So another Tim Keller quote. Someone read this one for me.

Meditation is thinking a truth in and thinking a truth out until the ideas become big and sweet, moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed in the heart.

I stumbled onto the verbal version of this at a pastor's conference for a small group in 2009, 2010. And I remember being there, and the Q&A was the best part. But someone was like, "Hey, Tim. What do you do when you're, like, kind of cold?" And he was very transparent with us. "Guys, I hit seasons all the time where everything becomes dry and cold for me." And we're like, "What?" And I was like, "What do you do?" He's like, "I double down. I double down on meditating on the gospel until it changes my heart. And if I'm extra cold, I will triple down."

And I remember that was a very moving moment for me. It was like, if my hero needs to meditate on the gospel all the time to warm his heart up, how much more so do I need to?

Alright, we've got time for this. This is great. So what I want you to do right now, on a little sheet of paper, on the Notes app, on your iPhone, whatever you need to do, is begin to start identifying some of those negative messages. I really want you to just write down your top three right now. You're not going to have to share this. I just need you to engage your hands right now.

For those of you standing in the back, there are wonderful seats in the front row. FYI, we're in a transition period, so some of our friends from Tempo are going to be cut through. So don't worry about the commotion in the back. Just worry about those negative messages right now.

Alright, if we had ninety minutes in a proper workshop environment, I would have you write down your top five negative messages, and then I would force you to look at finding a gospel promise in the Bible that addressed that negative message. I wouldn't let you leave the room until you've done that exercise.

Sadly, when you have an hour version or a fifty-five minute version, you don't have time for that. Let me just implore upon you the importance of this reality here. Doing this exercise is the difference between enjoying Jesus and not enjoying Jesus. I know that sounds way over the top, but it's really true. So when I've watched just normal lay leaders like yourself in churches literally do this exercise and share it with each other, their lives begin to change.

So I want to ask two questions to help us get over the hurdle of not doing this. What keeps us from identifying those five negative messages and writing them down on a sheet of paper?

Embarrassment. Denial. Protection. Self protection. Being too busy to think about it. "I can't be wrong." It's horribly uncomfortable. It's like we think about them all the time already—I don't want to spend more time doing them.

Absolutely. Identifying them, writing them down doesn't activate their power, but it almost starts beginning to neutralize them when you put a flashlight on. So being able to name your enemy and put it on a sheet of paper does wonders for you. Because it's like, okay, I know it's floating around my head and heart all the time, but this is it. I've just identified what I have to address and attack with all my soul and heart. You can't win a battle if you can't identify the enemy.

Barriers to the Exercise

What keeps us from doing this? Work. Bible literacy. That's a real problem these days. Sometimes it feels like you're hurting so much. You've got to find some fresh verses. So you have your own unbelief issues at that point, right? Do you feel kind of silly, simple? You're like, "I think I need something more complex for my complex heart. I need the special medicine."

What I've discovered watching people do this for years now is this: if you gave fifteen minutes, you can do this. You probably need thirty to do this well. Who cares? To me, I don't care how long it takes. Just do it.

But here's what I've discovered—it's not that simple. What we really need is another human being we trust to help us with this exercise. You're never meant to do this by yourself. The moment you try to do this by yourself, you're gonna utterly fail.

The Power of Community

So what does it look like for you to have another human being at CTK to do this with? If you're married, we should start with our spouses, right? And then kind of work out from there.

So identifying those negative messages and then identifying the Gospel promises—what's the value of doing this with another human being? They can remind you later. They can tell you there's Gospel Promises. So not only will they now be aware of your negative messages, when they see you go down that road, they're the first one there to be in your face reminding you of the gospel and reminding you of Jesus.

The most powerful experience of my life is anytime I've gone down the shame road—my wife preaching the gospel to me. Hands down. It can sometimes be as simple as a text message.

We were meant to do this in community. The power of the gospel is released when it's preached, and the best sermons are the ones you preach to your heart or your neighbor preaches to you. And everybody wins. When your friend's going down the shame storm and you're preaching the gospel to them, you're gonna tear up preaching the gospel to them. They're gonna tear up receiving the gospel. Everyone's enjoying Jesus.

What keeps us from doing this with another human being? Exposure. We have certain images we want to keep up. It changes relationships. Accountability. Lack of trust. Busyness. Pride. Tons of pride.

The Secret Weapon: Humility

So the secret weapon to this is, who gets the grace of God in the Bible? The humble. Who else gets the grace of God? Sinners. If you just read the red letters to Jesus, he basically talks about how the weak get Jesus and sinners get Jesus.

So if we're all willing to be weak sinners, we're going to start getting a whole lot more of Jesus. And I think that's what gets in the way of us enjoying Jesus—our self righteousness. Those images we've built so hard to portray ourselves as that amazing man or woman of God. The moment we could just embrace being messed up, really needy, broken sinners, well then the grace of God finds its way to us really quick. And it consumes us and overwhelms us.

So when you have a human being you can trust to learn these skills with, where you can talk about your negative messages and preach the gospel to each other, our lives change.

So here's another tool I created for—honestly, I had us Presbyterians in mind for this tool. Because a lot of times we're like, we're in the truth bucket, right? Well, I believe in regeneration and propitiation and adoption and sanctification, and those words just bounce off your heart. But those gospel truths are built on gospel promises: I'm new, I'm in Jesus, I'm cherished, I'm approved, I'm a beloved child, and I've been delivered, I'm not alone. These start penetrating our heart way faster. But they're built on certain actions. Why? Because Jesus has washed me, and Jesus has taken me in, and Jesus has died for me, and Jesus has satisfied the wrath God deserved, and Jesus has abandoned—for me. You see where I'm going with this, don't you?

The reason I include this tool so when you go back home is for those of you who are built around being really theological with your faith. I want you to take those truths and turn them into promises and actions so that you can preach it to your hearts. For most of us, going around saying, "Jesus, you're my justification," does absolutely nothing for us. "Jesus, you're my propitiation," does nothing for us. But learning to see the action behind that changes everything. Jesus, you swallow the justice and wrath of God on my behalf. You devoured the justice of God. You just soaked it in so you could give me your righteousness, so that I could be delighted in and enjoyed by the Father. Oh, now that melts my heart.

So this is an art that we have to learn, but we can't do it by ourselves, and I can't say that loud enough. The only way we're going to figure this out is we can learn the art of preaching the gospel to each other and to ourselves together. At some point, you're going to be in community groups where you're going to try to do this together. But until that happens, start pairing off and figuring out how to do it right now.

We got like ten minutes. Questions? Confirms? Objections?

[Questions from audience about accessing the chart and resources]

What do you do when you are telling yourself these truths, but you have people around you, certain people in your life who are still combating those truths with negative messages or behavior?

Oh, wow. That's a hard one. I think that requires unique personal antidote. I don't feel like you need to share out who those names and personalities are, but I would make sure you have other people in your life that are reminding you of the gospel and keeping you grounded and secure. Because a lot of us do have relationships that we still need to maintain those relationships, but they're not a force of good in our life. So to be able to have some boundaries with those relationships, but have other relationships where they're pumping us up in the gospel is going to be massive. Thanks for sharing that, Ruth.

Building New Habits

So I've been on a little bit of a habit kick. I've been realizing there's all these little mini habits and major habits you have to build to actually have real new routines and patterns of neural life. It's really hard. Even just creating one new basic habit can just be a battle of your lifetime. Doesn't it feel like that? Like, just getting up at a new time, or for me, not watching TV when I go to bed. You know, there's certain things like, oh, this is so hard. Starting to work out. There's tons of habits that are hard.

I found building new habits around meditating on the gospel and actually preaching it to your negative messages and your unbelieving heart—these are really hard habits to build. And we just can't do them by ourselves. So I really want to implore upon you: for those of you who can scan a room and kind of go, "Gosh, who can I do this with? Who can I do this with?" Start there.

Next week, I want to cover repentance, which is like faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin, and they lead to renewal dynamics. So what I gave you today was a tool to kind of get the faith engine working—preaching the gospel to your unbelief. And next week, we're going to do the repentant side of the coin: like what to actually do with all those deeper motivational forces that are wreaking havoc in your life.

What I've discovered is if we can do this at all together and start creating those habits slowly but surely, it creates the fuel and the power source for everything else in our Christian life. So tying it back into what we talked about yesterday: if you want to enjoy loving the lost, it starts right here. If you want unbelievers to see something different about you, it starts right here.

If you want a fuel source that gets you through the hardship of building relationships with people who don't know Christ, it starts right here. If you wanna have the power to love other brothers and sisters in the church, it starts right here. And this is the most fundamental habit to the Christian life. You can see how basic it is: identify your unbelief, meditate on gospel promises, and combat that unbelief wherein it captures your imagination.

So I'll be around week to week. We can keep talking about this. I'm really excited about how you all engaged. I can't wait to see what God does here.

Prayer

Father in heaven, thank you so much for what you did this past hour. We wanna give you all the glory and credit. Thank you for allowing us to sit around the gospel for an hour. Lord Jesus, would you give us all the capacity to build new habits around meditating on the gospel and preaching it to our hearts, and would you help us to do it together that CTK might have a fresh renewal movement that leads to our lives radically changing, filled with inexpressible joy, and where we see a result of that as thousands of people coming to Christ. We pray this in your blessed name, Jesus. Amen.