Gospel, J.D Greear

 

Gospel – Can change a heart, a community, and the world when it is recovered and applied.

 

Page 28 - Our original sin was Idolatry. For Adam and Eve, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Its fruit was so important they were willing to disobey God to get it. When something becomes so important to you that is drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it. You are willing to say “no” to God to get it.

Ultimately, idolatry is behind all of our sins.

 

Page 48 – According to the gospel, that is exactly what you can, and should, say. Jesus’ death has paid for every ounce of your sin; His perfect life has not been credited to you. In light of that, do you really feel like you could make God more favorable to you by doing your quiet time every day?

Martin Luther said our hearts are wired for “work-righteousness”

 

Page 50 – Satan’s primary temptation strategy is to try and make us forget what God has said about us and to evaluate our standing before God by some other criteria.

Page 54 – God’s approval is the power that liberates us from sin, not the reward for having liberated ourselves.

 

Page – to all of these emotions- fears, insecurity, false-confidence, despair, worry- we must preach the gospel.

 

Page 57 – You must dwell on God’s great truth daily. It is the only way to drive out fear, unbelief, and temptation.

 

Page 58 – The moment we take our eyes off of the gospel, those rodents of self-righteousness and self-condemnation spring back up.

Page 97 – The Bible is full of directives and prohibitions. Isn’t the point of the Bible to stop sinning? Yes. But ceasing sin is the by-product of seeing God.

 

Page 113 – Someone saturated in the grace of the gospel develops an almost insane ability to forgive.

Page 120 – Ultimately, I am responding to Jesus, not to the person in front of me. The person wronging me may not deserve a response of grace, but the Jesus who bled and died for me does.

 

Page 138 – Christians who worship God, not money, need much less from the world to be happy and secure.

 

-       Randy Alcorn says, you can’t take any of your money with you when you die, but you can send a lot of it on ahead of you.

 

Page – 141 The most fundamental question every disciple of Christ must ask himself is which Kingdom his primary pursuit is.

 

Page – 148 Bible is not a buffet where you take what you want and leave what you don’t. You and I don’t judge the Bible; it should judge us.

 

Page 150 – We will say something like this “Lord, let my life be a seed for others, like yours was for me, planted into the ground. Let my dream die so that others might live. 

Martin Luther said that it wouldn’t matter if Jesus had died a thousand times if no one ever heard about it. We are the only way they hear about it.

 

Page 199 – John Owen said, “Spiritual disciplines can trim the roots of sin, but only the gospel pulls up the roots.”

 

Page 199 Paul Miller says, “Reading the Bible doesn’t create intimacy with God, but it does make room for it.”

 

Page 202 – If you understand the gospel, however, then you can practice the spiritual disciplines as God intends: as gateways to the gospel, not as substitutes for the gospel. You can even set goals- for example, to spend at least fifteen minutes in the Word and fifteen minutes in prayer twice every day; to fast once a month; to share Christ weekly, etc.