Gospel

Not-random-at-all acts of Gospel

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Dave and the boys with Papa, Dave's dad. What a cute bunch of guys!

Dave and the boys with Papa, Dave’s dad. What a cute bunch of guys!

When we were together with my husband’s side of the family over Christmas, my father-in-law made an announcement: “For my birthday this year I don’t want you to buy me presents. Instead, I want you to do random acts of kindness during the week leading up to my birthday.”

His birthday is February 1, so last Monday we received our instruction letter, which included suggestions and the number of RAKs (Random Acts of Kindness) for each of us. Each adult was asked to do six RAKs and each child/teen three. The total added up to his age (which I’m not revealing).

I left my house most mornings last week thinking about those RAKs. I prayed about them. I created extra time in my morning routines so that I wouldn’t feel rushed, so I could see opportunities and then engage in them. At night our kids shared their ideas for RAKs with each other and us. They were excited about telling them to Papa at the end of the week. There was something a little different about how we approached each day.

We had a shared mission for the week, and it drove us.

Why is it so hard for us to remember that we are “on mission” as followers of Christ? And not just any mission; we are on the greatest mission of ALL.

When I was a kid, I loved watching shows like Charlie’s Angels, The A-Team, and—my favorite—Scarecrow and Mrs. King. The common element of these was a sense of mission. The heroes in each show were given jobs by a wise boss who knew more than they did, and they pursued them with purpose and a trust in the one who planned them.

We have been told that “good works have been planned in advance for us to do” by the wisest “boss” of all, and these good works are not simply “random” or merely “kind.” They are part of an intricate, grand plan that incorporates even the ones we see as “small” done by the “smallest” of us. They are all part of God’s Gospel plan.

We can begin each day knowing we are agents of God and our days are not random at all. This requires LISTENING. We have a huge advantage over Charlie’s Angels and the Scarecrow. They lived back in the days of landlines and snail mail. Spiritually we are equipped with Bluetooth headgear so advanced it is invisible. We have the Holy Spirit within us. If we LISTEN to Him, we can hear the promptings to draw near (to God and others), to speak (Scripture says we’ll even be given the words to say), to befriend, to let go our agenda for the moment or day, to listen to others, to act, and even (perhaps the hardest work of all) to see mundane tasks as Gospel work.

Not-random-at-all acts of Gospel—all throughout our days.

For further study: Psalm 73:28 (one of OUR good works can be simply telling of the works of God), Matthew 5:16, John 10:32 (Jesus talks of his good works as being “from the Father”), Acts 9:36, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:13, I Timothy 5:25, 6:18, Titus 2:7, 2:14, 3:14, Hebrews 10:24, James 2:14 and 3:13.

This picture actually relates to a piece I posted last week: Crimson Berries, White Snow. A couple days after I wrote that post, we had a fresh snowfall, and I noticed the white snow covering the crimson berries. I couldn't resist--such a beautiful picture of Christ covering us with His righteousness!

This picture actually relates to a piece I posted last week: Crimson Berries, White Snow . A couple days after I wrote that post, we had a fresh snowfall, and I noticed the white snow covering the crimson berries. I couldn’t resist–such a beautiful picture of Christ covering us with His righteousness!

 

 

Crimson berries, white snow

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I took this today in our front yard. What an amazing blue sky!

I took this last fall. (It’s the same picture, just uncropped, that I used as my new header)

On the tree in the front yard hang the leftover berries from last fall. They were bright before frost, but now they look almost black against the snow. It brings to mind Isaiah 1:18. God says to the Israelites, “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”

I think of scarlet and crimson as beautiful colors—like the berries before the frost—but God spends 16 verses describing the crimson and scarlet of the His peoples’ sins, and it’s ugly! “You’re rebellious,” He tells them. “I’ve loved you and cared for you, but you have rejected and ignored Me. All your ‘churchiness’ is nothing but show. You’re hypocrites, following an outward religion that has no goodness to it. In fact, you offer sacrifices to Me and then go out and live without love for others, abusing and neglecting the helpless” (my paraphrased summary)

“Do you think that’s what I, the GOOD GOD, want?”

The scarlet and crimson of verse 18, then, are NOT beautiful. These people are as far from the purity of white as they could be. The crimson and scarlet have set into the fabric of their souls, and they are irreparably stained.

We must remind ourselves that we are no different. OUR sins–collectively and individually–are scarlet and crimson. We, too, are irreparably stained.

This takes on deeper meaning when we see the terms “white as snow” and “white as wool” applied to Christ: Daniel 7:9 says, “…the Ancient One sat down to judge. His clothing was as white as snow, his hair like purest wool.” Revelation 1:14 describes Christ’s head and hair as “white like wool, as white as snow.”

Our crimson stains and Christ’s white purity are as unalike as possible. We drip with sin, as if we have been dipped in a vat of it, formed in it (Ps. 51:5). Now let’s look at what is in the vat. It is not simply liquid color—a straightforward red dye. No! To understand how God sees this crimson sin, we must go to another verse in Isaiah: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). The polluted garment is–to be as graphic as Scripture is–like the underclothes a woman would wear during her menstrual cycle. They would be permeated with a bodily fluid that stunk and stained.

THAT is the crimson, the scarlet.

God the Pure One cannot condone and “coexist” with our stench. He would cease to be perfect, sinless God if He said that our disregard for Him and our injustice toward our fellow man was “okay.” Though He longs to hold us in His arms, that is not possible as long as we are stained and dripping with this crimson.

We have tried, over and over through the centuries, to fix this problem ourselves. All religions are simply our efforts to make ourselves fit for communion with God, worthy of his approval. But we cannot do this, though we claim to. But any “god” we can reach through our own efforts must be a god of our own making–and therefore not truly Divine.

So we must be changed, somehow made pure. Some outside agent must be applied to go over our stain. That’s exactly what God did in Christ. Christ, unstained and pure, took on our human flesh, a body that was stained with the effects of sin, that would suffer and age, that had the same bodily functions ours do, with emotions and frailties. He was “in all points like we are…”

“Yet without sin.” That needs an exclamation mark! He had no inner stain and He kept Himself unstained!!! THAT enabled Him to do an amazing thing for us. His death allowed us to be covered with new garments–HIS complete, utter goodness, white as snow.

“Though your sins are like scarlet”–permeating to our very core, as much a part of us as dye becomes part of a garment when the garment is dipped in it–“I will make them as white as snow.”

With the covering of Christ’s purity, our stains—past, present and future (God is not bound by time)—are overwhelmed, and God the Good can draw us near to Himself. His Spirit enters our hearts like a bleaching agent, and begins transforming us from the inside out, a process that will end (oh, Heaven!) with us being LIKE Christ. Selfishness and pride will never again seep from our hearts. We will be pure not only in standing (with Christ’s covering) but in practical actuality.

I am thankful I opened my curtains yesterday and noticed the shriveled, darkened berries and the gleam of snow behind them. I am thankful for this reminder because my gratitude is in direct proportion to my realization of my need for Christ.

Same berries after the frost

Same bush after the frost

“For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).

Marriage Advice, part 2

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Just after I wrote the blog entry “Marriage Advice, part 1” https://journeytojen.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/902/, Dave (my husband) left for Germany for two weeks. For some reason, it felt odd to write about marriage while my spouse was gone (plus, I run nearly every blog entry by him before I post it), so I decided to wait.

Well, he’s back (has been for almost two weeks), and here is the Second Most Important Piece of Marriage Advice I would give to young women about to be married:

Understand the true purpose of your marriage.

This sounds un-romantic.

But the truth is that romance is a horrible purpose for a marriage. So are children, companionship, sex, fulfillment, even “love.”

Those all fall abysmally short of the true purpose: to honor God and make Him known.

If that seems a little too “spiritual” or dry, hang on. My contention is that when we make romance or “love” the ultimate goal for our marriage, we are aiming far, far too low.

To honor God and make Him known: that is a purpose that is sacred, amazing, practical, mystical, adventurous, and, yes, incredibly romantic.

Every marriage, including yours, is meant to build a love that is like the love Christ has for His own bride, the church. This has two major implications:

First, this means that you are focused on meeting the needs (emotional, physical, social, and spiritual) of the other person, not on the needs of self. To do this consistently and well requires the power of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ; there is no other way to accomplish this. (Marriage was the first major tool God used to expose and combat selfishness in my life.) This results in true romance, a marriage that has others saying, “There’s something about that couple. They love each other differently.”

Second, God has good works planned for the two of you together. He has adventures mapped out for you as a couple. He did not create your marriage only to impact you and your spouse. This is a really, really cool thing. You get to be a team. You get to do ministry together. You get to develop and then share God passions. When Dave and I look back on our marriage, we don’t point to weekend getaways or candlelight dinners as times of growth; no, it was moving together to Okinawa—and the difficult decision to move back. It’s been having children together. It’s been feeling the nudges of the Holy Spirit separately and then realizing He’s guiding us in the same direction (like to take in international students or make one of our many moves or adopt or simply befriend a particular neighbor).

Your marriage has a big, BIG purpose. It’s part of a big, BIG plan! That’s exciting! And when the two of you are more focused on this—on your marriage being an agent for the Gospel—your love and romance will deepen in ways that make movie romance appear shallow.

Communion Transformed

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DSC_0269Communion terrified me for much of my growing-up years. Not because I believed I was ingesting real flesh and blood—oh, no. My father, a converted Catholic, was quite clear on his teaching against that. But he was also very clear regarding the I Corinthians verses about the Lord’s Supper. I got the message: Communion was NOT to be taken lightly. I was to do some self-examining prior to partaking and my attitude should be serious.

He needn’t have worried. I was SERIOUS!

As the pastor read from either I Corinthians or the Gospels, I would wrench my spirit, examining my life for sin. “Oh, God, please, please show me. I don’t want to do this in an unworthy manner,” I would pray, rolodex-ing through my past few days, looking for sins I had committed.

I don’t remember ever taking the little pill tablet of bread or the small cup of grape juice with joy. It was always with fear—“Did I do okay? Did I find everything to confess?”

Thankfully, that is no longer the case. I take Communion now as a symbol of Christ’s doing what I cannot do: (though I tried to for years on years) to rid myself of sin.

But there is another ironic change. I view sin differently, perhaps, oddly enough, more seriously than I did then.

Because I have realized it goes far deeper in my soul than I once thought it did.

I am “steeped” in sin. I like that description. The Pharisees used it when speaking to the man born blind—since, of course, his blindness proved that either his mother or he must have been more sinful than most—hence the blindness.

The word “steeped” makes me think of tea—the teabag infusing the entire pot—or of a chicken cooked all day in a sauce—till every bite of meat tastes of it. Separated from the goodness of God that I need at my very core, my being instead has steeped in my own selfishness. Hurtful actions, attitudes, and words are merely outpourings of this “steeping.”

I remember a Seinfeld episode in which George decided to do the opposite of all his natural impulses. It worked well for him—because every one of his natural impulses was actually destructive to either himself, others, or to relationship between himself and others.

If my sin issues are deeper than my actions or words, even thoughts… If my sin is actually the belief that I am most important in the universe—more important than any other person and certainly than God… If my sin is an attitude of self-sufficiency, of conviction that I am good and right—and, therefore, that anyone who disagrees with me is wrong…

Then the problem is not what I do, what I say, what I feel.

The problem is me, myself, I.

And I need transformation.

And I need to stop settling for conformation.

Back to communion.

My fears were based on the wrong belief that God wants conformation.

But Communion itself bears witness against this. If God wanted conformation, our sacrament would result in us putting something on, something that could be seen by others, like a perpetual Ash Wednesday.

But the commanded sacrament—“Do THIS in remembrance of Me”—is an ingestion that does not seem to change our outer selves at all. Eat of me, Christ says. Drink of me. Take Me into yourselves. Let Me be the nutrients that change you on the inside.

And “Do” this, present tense and ongoing. Again and again we must remember that Christ came to change the inner first. His work on the cross was complete—I am not saying that He must die again and again, oh, no—but I forget so easily and settle for conformity because I believe I can do that work myself.

So we take communion over and over and are reminded that He is in us, creating new hearts within, that THIS inner transformation is the substance of our faith, and outer change is merely the reflection, the outworking.

I no longer need to be terrified—either of my sin or that God is check-marking my confessions against a list of outward actions. What a wonderful change!

I take the wine: His blood covered and still covers my sin.

I take the bread: He is IN me!

The two together equal communion: friendship between human and GOD!

The terror is gone.

And I celebrate.

The God Who Mourns

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It is in times of tragedy that we find that the “God” we have created in our own image simply will not work.

As news continues to break about the killings at Sandy Hook elementary school, I have attempted to follow Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” and Hebrews 13:3, “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

But I can’t do it.

I’m too fickle.

Right now, after the U.S.’s latest mass killing, I know there are 26 families whose hearts have been crushed. Because of our country’s advanced media, I can know the names and see the pictures.

But I am unable to keep them in my heart.

I pray for them, and I remind myself of them, but then I go about my daily activities. I fix meals and do laundry, I write articles, I carpool and help with homework.

All good, all necessary.

But I also slip into ingratitude. I find myself frustrated with the amount of laundry my family produces and the daily question of “What’s for dinner?” Four kids try to talk over each other at the dinner table, and I think, “I don’t want to deal with this.”

But even as I think that, I know there are 20 families that would love to be dealing with this right now. They long to be making lunches for all their kids, to be doing mundane tasks like writing a grocery list and thinking about Christmas gifts for teachers.

Yet I lose my gratitude over the tiniest, silliest little things.

And I will do this again and again.

For the last several days and for the next week or so we have been and will be faced with these 26 families, but then we will forget.

We are good at forgetting. It’s a survival tactic, a way to pretend that things are okay.

We know they aren’t. Even when we are in the lulls between tragedies—when this summer’s killing in the movie theater faded from front and center and the mass killing in Sandy Hook hadn’t yet happened—things were not right, not here in the U.S. and not all across the world. Injustice is rampant.

I cannot hold all that sorrow.

In the book (and movie) The Secret Life of Bees, there is a character named May who feels others’ sorrows as if they are her own. May’s sisters shield her from the radio and television because a 15-second report of an abuse or death or injustice will make her wail with heartfelt pain.

At the end of the movie May gives up. “I can’t do this anymore,” she writes to her sisters. “I can’t carry any more pain.”

I can’t either. None of us can. So most of us choose not to even try. We don’t continue to pray. We don’t mourn. We distract ourselves with fun or with frustration.

We forget.

But not God.

Tragedies like this remind me that I really, really don’t want a God who is like me.

And this time of year, with nativities all around my home, reminds me that He is not.

The all-powerful, completely just, sovereign God of this universe chose to remember us. He chose to put on flesh. He chose to touch lepers and wander homeless and attend funerals and befriend women and children. He chose to be “a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” to show us that God the righteous is also Savior, Redeemer, and Friend.

And He chose to die so that we might actually know this God who never forgets, never forsakes, never loses interest in us.

I will forget.

God will not.

It’s like a fact!

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I think he took this picture himself using my computer. All I know is that I opened my computer the other day to find this picture as my background–compliments of his older sister, I’m sure! Love it!

The other morning I opened the devotional book Jesus Calling to read it aloud to Dave as he ironed his shirt.

“Oh, I have a hard time believing that most of the time,” I said—before I’d even read the first sentence.

“Believing what?” Dave asked.

“Here’s what it says,” I answered. “’I am pleased with you, My child.’ And listen to this: ‘You don’t have to perform well in order to receive My Love.’ Ouch!”

Forty-five minutes later I was in the middle of my workout when son Jake came down to the basement and did what he always does in the early mornings when none of his other siblings are yet stirring: he went straight to the couch and cuddled with our dog, Chai.

“Oh, Chai,” he said, his voice syrupy sweet. “You’re such a good girl. What a good girl you are!”

Feeling a bit like chopped liver—I hadn’t even rated a “hello”—and in the middle of a huffing, puffing part of my workout, I asked, “What has she done to make her a good girl, Jake? She’s just lying there.”

He looked up, his face surprised. “Mom, I love her. That’s what makes her good!”

Wow!

I love her. That’s what makes her good.

I am pleased with you, My child.

I guess God really wanted to drive the lesson home.

Ephesians 2:8 “For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God;”

I like how the Amplified version puts it: “not through your own striving.” Oh, I strive. And I beat myself up and assume that God feels the same as I do when all my efforts come up short or are revealed to be what they are—things done to make me feel good about myself.

At bedtime the other night, Patrick said something hurtful about a group of people. He said it without thought, just to be talking, but I didn’t let it slide. “Do you realize how hurtful those words were? Do you realize what you were saying?”

When I explained, he DID understand.

And he felt awful.

When I went into his room to kiss him goodnight, his cheeks were tear-stained and he wouldn’t look at me.

I rubbed his head, and he turned his face to me and asked, “Mommy, do you still love me after what I said?”

Man, when any of your kids say that—but especially your adopted baby—it stops the heart!

“Oh, sweetheart,” I said—when I could say anything, “nothing’s going to change my love for you. I Love You! It’s like a fact.”

He loves me!

He loves you!

It’s like a fact.

opportunities

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Philip from Uganda preached in church yesterday. His message beautifully translated across cultures and accents. At the end of it, Judy, the older of our international students, turned to me and said, “I really liked that. I understood it.”

His focus was all about how our salvation does not, cannot rest in our works but only in our faith in the work of Christ.

Ironically, though, I left a little discouraged.

Philip is an evangelist. That’s his gifting. I’ve known that for a long time, ever since I walked streets in Uganda with him when I was working on Patrick’s adoption. I watched conversations between him and others go straight to Gospel without the other person feeling coerced. During his sermon yesterday, Philip told of how he is using this gift on Chicago’s transit systems. He prays for opportunities, he sits next to people on the Metra or El, and pretty soon he has their history with God (or lack of it) and he’s sharing about Christ.

After the main service, I talked with Ray, one of my oldest friends in our church—really, he’s in his late eighties, with grandchildren almost my age. He shared some of his latest conversations with me. Ray’s always had a “gift for gab” (as my mom says it), and in retirement he began walking the Prairie Path every day and stopping total strangers to ask if he could pray for them. In all the years he’s done this, only two have ever told him no. More often people tell him their struggles or their life stories and thank him for praying.

I left church knowing that Philip was headed to the train station and Ray to the Prairie Path—and probably both would have Gospel conversations with a total stranger before the day was out.

I left knowing that I probably would NOT have one of them.

I grew up always feeling vaguely guilty about not enjoying sharing the Gospel on street corners or with salespersons. I used to beg God for boldness, for opportunities. I reviewed conversations I’d had with acquaintances or unbelieving friends, trying to find spots at which I could have turned the conversation toward God, beating myself up for “failing” to witness.

About seven years ago I joined an ongoing writing workshop class. Almost none of my classmates would have called themselves “followers of Jesus.” I watched and listened a lot the first couple of classes, and then my guilt set in. I began praying for boldness and opportunities as I drove to class. I didn’t hold back when people asked about me—answered with “Christian school teacher, husband teaches Bible,” but no “opportunities” opened up, though I had plenty of conversations. Then, one day on the way to class, the Holy Spirit interrupted my frantic praying. “Be quiet. Wait. Listen. RELAX!”

Really? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But I tried it, began to listen more than talk, began to learn about people’s lives. I focused on giving really good critique and willingly took the advice of others about my writing. I worked on excellence in my writing and humility in my attitude.

A year or so into the workshop I considered many of the other members to be friends. One night, as we chatted late after class, one of them said, “You talk about God so naturally, Jen.”

What?

“I do?” I asked her.

“Yeah. You’re always talking about the things you’re learning, what He’s teaching you.” She saw the look on my face and hurried to say, “No, it’s okay. That’s what I mean. It doesn’t seem forced. It’s just part of you.”

Thankfully I was grateful rather than proud—amazed more than anything. I didn’t realize that had happened! God had made me comfortable with these people, had knitted friendship between us. He’d put love in my heart for them. He had done the work; I had just listened. So though I still prayed for them on my drives to class, it was no longer forced but natural, with concern, specific to their needs. God did that, not me. Even now, though it has been years since I’ve seen many of them, I still pray for them, not out of duty but out of love.

God brought all this to my mind in the middle of my guilt yesterday, in the middle of my comparing myself with Philip and Ray. It was a good reminder. I DO want to pray for boldness and for opportunities, but I need to do so with rest, with confident trust that He will provide both, and that the opportunities He has picked out for me are especially chosen to use the ways He’s gifted me. My opportunities may not make for great stories, but they still testify of His Gospel work and His redemption—both in other people AND in me.

And speaking of my different kinds of opportunities, at one point yesterday afternoon, I realized that, somehow, Judy and I were home alone together (Dave had carted the younger ones along to Em’s soccer practice and Kelly was still at the b-day party). I sat down next to her at the dining room table (aka the “homework table”) and asked, “How are you?” We talked without a single interruption for thirty minutes, about relationships, adjusting to four siblings, all the “new” that she and Kelly have encountered in the last seven weeks, small ways we can accommodate and care for each other better. “You know,” I told her, suddenly seeing truth in that moment, “this is grace! We have eight very different people all lumped into a house together. It’s God’s grace that we actually desire to grow in relationship with each other, that we want to love each other well.”

Oh, I have opportunities all right. They may look different from Philip’s and Ray’s, but that’s okay.

I just need to see them for what they are.

And I need to celebrate the work God is doing in and through me.

absolutely no connection with the blog topic–but I liked how the light shone through the glass.

 

 

 

 

“blankets handmade by women. women handmade by God.”

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“Blankets handmade by women. Women handmade by God” is a phrase used by HandandCloth.org to describe the kantha blankets they sell and the  Bengali women who make them. These women would otherwise be in very at-risk environments but have been rescued and given the opportunity to make a healthy living, hear the Gospel, and grow in faith in Christ.

These are some of the prayer cards that Sarah gave me today. Twenty-six women work at Basha (the company in Bangladesh), and one is featured on each card with her prayer requests.

I had the privilege today of hearing Sarah Aulie, a Wheaton Academy alum, describe this work and how she came to be doing it–a wonderful journey that seemed winding at the time but now, on looking back, was extremely purposeful. She showed us one of the beautiful kantha blankets she sells and shared the stories of four of the women who make them at their business in Bangladesh. If you would like to learn more about this wonderful ministry (or “business as mission,” as Sarah describes it) that offers “work and Word,” “livelihood and Life,” visit the web site at http://www.handandcloth.org. And if you want to get a jumpstart on Christmas presents, the blankets are each one of a kind and beautiful.

6 word gospel memoirs, continued

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I have this beautiful “flower” (I don’t really know what it is) in my yard. It looks a little like a heart, which makes me think of another 6-word memoir: God’s heart for me revealed: Christ.

Earlier this week (September 17) I wrote about 6-word memoirs and how they can show the gospel at work in our lives. Here are a couple of 6-word memoirs that readers sent in: “Saved by grace, continuing the journey” and “God found me. I am alive.”

The following quotes aren’t limited to six words, but they are great statements about the gospel. I kept finding more and more I liked, so I got a little carried away with the number I pasted in. Hope you enjoy them, too!

“There are only two ways that God’s justice can be satisfied with respect to your sin. Either you satisfy it or Christ satisfies it. You can satisfy it by being banished from God’s presence forever. Or you can accept the satisfaction that Jesus Christ has made.”
― R.C. Sproul, Choosing My Religion

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.”
― John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

“The Law saith, Where is thy righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction? The Gospel saith, Christ is thy righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction.”
― Patrick Hamilton

“If the gospel is old news to you, it will be dull news to everyone else.”
― Kevin DeYoung

“Salvation is not a reward for the righteous, it is a gift for the guilty.”
― Steven Lawson

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
― Timothy Keller

“Never be content with your current grasp of the gospel. The gospel is the life-permeating, world-altering, universe-changing truth. It has more facets than a diamond. It’s depths man will never exhaust.”
― C.J. Mahaney