I’m still growing. Recently, God brought an area of spiritual un-health to my attention and I began to pray for healing. With what I believe to be the insight of the Holy Spirit I was able to connect up some incidents in my earlier life with some harmful thought patterns I’ve struggled with for years. Had it been someone else, I probably would have pinpointed the issue much sooner. Diagnosing spiritual problems is much of what I do as a pastor. But, just like the cobbler’s kids go without shoes, sometimes my own spiritual growth lags behind what you’d expect, given my profession. Once I was able to step outside and look at things with renewed clarity, the solution became fairly obvious (something I also attribute to the insight of the Spirit). The solution was a simple phrase, a biblical truth that is core to Christ’s gospel. This is the gospel I study, preach and teach nearly every day. But, it hadn’t yet shined it’s light into this dark corner of my life. God’s timing, God’s help. Grateful.
I’ve been saying it for several years now (it started as we were preaching through the book of Romans), we grow as we more fully absorb the powerful truth of the gospel. We don’t need new and formerly hidden truths about God. Those happen too, but what changes us is a deeper absorption of the one truth of the gospel and the implications it has for our lives. I’ve been sitting with this idea for several years now, preaching it, implementing it in counseling and applying it to my own life. I’m convinced more than ever that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). That salvation is holistic. That power is real. That God is living and loving.
So it is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to our upcoming Gospel Proficiency course. The main burden of the Gospel Proficiency course is to learn how to bring the gospel to bear on the story of our life, thereby unleashing its power in us. And, by doing so, we’ll also learn how to bring the gospel to bear on the life stories of the people around us. So don’t miss out on the potential for some Christ-centered transformation. Sign up here.