Grace for the Race

You may remember the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie trilogy about a scientist father who accidentally reduces his family to the size of insects with his electromagnetic shrink ray. Today I’d like to offer a word of encouragement about a different kind of shrinking, the kind that comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This supernatural shrinkage causes us to decrease while our Lord increases.

He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30 ESV)

These words are contained in the final discourse of John the Baptist in the New Testament’s fourth gospel. God raised up John to be the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ. To say that John’s ministry was “successful” would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. And yet we can find no selfish ambition or self-centeredness in John anywhere. When asked who he was, John made it clear that he was totally content to be what he was not. He asserted that he was not “the Prophet” or “Elijah” or “the Christ.” John was utterly devoid of any narcissism as he played the divine role God had called him to play as a “voice of one crying out in the wilderness” (John 1:23 ESV).

John the Baptist possessed the supernatural strength to shrink because he had Jesus. His identity was in his Messiah, not in his ministry. He found his significance only in his Savior. His purpose in life was rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ. John was just like the apostle Paul when it came to his understanding of life: to live was Christ . . . and Christ alone. John’s heart beat for nothing smaller than Jesus, right up until it beat its last at the hands of the sword of the wicked King Herod.

Only those who have their identity in Jesus can say, “He must increase and I must decrease.” John found joy in this truth, the kind of joy that simply cannot be shaken by outward circumstances. John’s joy was an inside job, created by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

One more thing about this incredible shrinking man. John the Baptist said he was unworthy to untie the laces of Jesus’ sandals, a job that only a gentile slave would be required to do prior to washing his master’s dirty feet. This godly man, of whom Jesus said, “Among those born of women there is no one greater than John” (Luke 7:28), considered himself lower than the lowliest slave in comparison to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

How is it with you? How are you doing in the area of decreasing? And is Jesus increasing in your life? Remember that these two actions—decreasing and increasing—go hand in hand. Jesus will not increase in your life if your life is too full of yourself. But the more you decrease, the more He will increase; and that, beloved, will make your joy complete!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN! 

Today I’d like to lift up a biblical model that comes from the life of the One who was constantly engaged in what I call “errands of eternal encouragement.”

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. (Acts 10:38)

Jesus spent His short time here on this earth in the ministry of going around doing good. Wouldn’t that be well said of all of us . . . that we poured out our lives going around doing good? I want to call your attention to a few particulars that can be a source of great inspiration to you today, right where this finds you. Jesus went around doing good . . .

INTENTIONALLY – Jesus was intentional about everything He did, especially as it related to going around and doing good. I have always found it remarkable to find these words at the beginning of John’s account of Jesus meeting the woman at Jacob’s well: Jesus “had to pass through Samaria”! Whatever the reasons that Jesus had for going through Samaria, which certainly included His divine appointment with the Samaritan woman, He passed through intentionally. It was no accident or a random roll of the dice that Jesus met this woman and offered her the gift of eternal salvation; our Lord’s entire life was marked by doing good intentionally.

PERSONALLY – Jesus went around doing good personally. He could have sent any or all of His disciples on His behalf to do all the good He intended to do, but He did not. He went around personally. He spoke with the woman at the well; He traveled for days to raise Lazarus from the tomb; He dined with Zacchaeus in his home; and He recruited the fishermen on the shoreline. Jesus personally touched the eyes of the blind and the skin of the leper; He changed water into wine at the wedding at Cana; He cleansed the temple in Jerusalem; and He talked late into the night with the religious leader Nicodemus.

Our Lord Jesus Christ engaged in His errands of eternal encouragement both intentionally and personally. He not only left us with a picture of encouragement but also with a model to follow. We must be intentional about going around doing good, or we will simply never find the time to get around to doing it! And make no mistake, it is one thing to have a good thing done on your behalf; it is another thing altogether to do good and do it yourself.

If we are to be models of our Master in living out the truths of the Gospel, we must not grow weary in our well-doing (Galatians 6:9). We will look for ways to meet people in their place of need and we will do the work ourselves as much as it is within our power.

In only 3 ½ years, how busily was our Lord engaged in the lives of others! But don’t miss this important truth: He often retreated to quiet places to spend time in prayer with His Father in heaven. He was always operating in the strength of His Holy Spirit, and if we are to live lives marked by going around doing good, we too should often retreat to spend time in prayer with Jesus.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!    

We have a responsibility to pass on the exalted truths of God from generation to generation. And that includes not only proclaiming His hand of mercy, but His hand of judgment. The combination of these divine attributes provides us with a full-orbed picture of God’s eternal plan of redemption, offering important life lessons for Christian believers

.Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. (Joel 1:2-4)

The Word of God instructs us to be students of God’s story. And the only way we can be students of His story is to read it, meditate on it, and come to know it. God inspired the prophet Joel to urge parents to take the time to know God’s story and to pass it along to their children.

The locusts Joel referred to were agents of God’s divine judgment on His people for their rebellion and disobedience. And when the destroying swarms of locusts were understood to be an instrument of redemption in the hands of God, His people would respond in repentance and return to their God. This is the pattern throughout the Old Testament history of God and His people: things would go well for a while; the people would grow complacent and turn away from God; God would send judgment; and the people would repent and return to God.

So . . . how well are you at telling God’s story to those around you? Are you spending adequate time in the Word each day to know it well enough to tell it? Sadly, many in the church today neglect the rich history of God’s story in the Old Testament. Yet the New Testament doesn’t make sense without the Old! It has been well said that “The Old Testament is revealed in the New, and the New Testament is concealed in the Old.” Both the Old and New Testaments make up one single story of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

The key is to see the Bible as a metanarrative—one single, overarching story—from beginning to end. Scripture is not comprised of 66 disconnected books offering stories with moralistic messages to keep us in line; it is the incomparable saga of God’s redemption and His pursuing love for rebels on the run. And God wants us to know it so well that we can share it with our children . . . so that they will share it with their children. With all the “stuff” we can pass along to our kids, there is nothing more important to give them than the story of our Savior.

Finally, in telling God’s story to our children, we are also to share how our story intersects with it. We can share the lessons we have learned in life from both our victories and our defeats. And we should explain how, through it all, God has loved us with an everlasting love that would lift us out of the ashes of defeat, dust us off, and send us back into the game of life. Now that is a story worth telling, over and over and over again!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!    

The word masquerade can be used to describe a false outward show or façade, pretense, or a hypocrite’s masquerade of virtue. Perhaps you may have attended a masquerade party where people dressed up wearing masks (false faces) and costumes which conceal who they really are.

And, sadly enough, we often fail to see the masquerade that takes place in ministry . . .

• Selfish ambition masquerades as sacrificial service
• Self-love masquerades as Savior love
• Little kingdom work masquerades as Big Kingdom work

Here is a story from Scripture which provides a great example of a spiritual masquerade:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

Mary and Martha were both serving their Lord. They were making preparations to receive Jesus and His disciples for a time of food and fellowship. Mary knew when to exchange her service for sitting at the feet of Jesus; Martha, on the other hand, did not. Yes, Martha was serving the Lord, but her service had taken the place of her Savior.

It is so easy to be busily satisfying the needs of self while simultaneously masquerading as a sold-out servant for our Savior! If you are a regular follower of this blog or a member of Cross Community Church, you are familiar with this statement: Good things become bad things when they become ultimate things! God gives us so many good things to enjoy in life—from family to friendship, money to ministry. But when we take any of the good gifts God has given to us and make them into ultimate gifts in our minds, they have become bad gifts that turn our affections away from God.

How do we keep this from happening—not only in ministry, but in every area of life?

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

Here is the key that unlocks the door to authenticity in all our activities: seeking first the kingdom of Christ and His righteousness. Jesus must be our first priority. He is to sit upon the throne of our lives. He is to be the Alpha and the Omega of everything we do—our first thought and our last thought. When we are more focused on our Savior, we are less focused on ourselves. When our Savior—not our service to our Savior—is truly our highest priority, then our service will be pleasing and acceptable in His sight and will also meet us in our deepest place of need.

So . . . are there any areas in your life that are masquerading as something other than what they truly are? When Jesus becomes a means to an end—any end—we miss the most important aspect of our calling. At this level of living, we don’t find our satisfaction in loving Jesus, but rather in what we get by serving Him. Yes, we love Jesus, but we love the stuff we get from Him just as much . . . if not more.

It is only when we have our priorities in order as Mary did, who knew her Savior was always more important than her service, that we will be able to rise above the masquerade and rest in our Master.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN! 

I have always tried to eat healthy. Now, there are some uncharitable souls who might say that it would be more “healthy” if I ate less, but that is a topic for another time. When I was a boy and my family was sitting around the dinner table, it would not be unusual for me to fill my plate with a heaping portion of “seconds” . . . only to get halfway through Round Two and find myself feeling very full indeed! At that point, I would look guiltily up at my mom, who would smile gently and say, “What’s wrong, son? Were your eyes bigger than your stomach?” What she meant, of course, was that my helping of “more” looked great to my eyes, but it was actually a great deal more than my stomach could actually take in!

I have often recalled Momma’s words in recent years—not at dinner time, but, oddly enough, when doing the work of ministry, especially since planting Cross Community Church in March of 2012. I long ago lost count of the number of times I dove headlong into multiple ministry projects, utterly confident that they were all great things to do. They looked great—and indeed, they were great—but together they were actually a great deal more than I could accomplish! In my stubborn determination not to admit that my eyes had been bigger than my “stomach,” I have frequently heaped my “to-do” plate far too full. I’ve worn myself down at times; worse still, I’ve worn down my wife, my family, and those who share in the work of ministry with me.

But thank God! He has not left me to myself. He has surrounded me with good and godly people (beginning with Kim, my beloved wife) who tells me, “Tommy, there is more to life than increasing its speed!”

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What does the worker gain from his toil? (Ecclesiastes 3:1-9)

What a question the wise preacher left us with! We see here a beautifully balanced portion of Scripture, which makes it crystal clear that our time—all of our time—is in the hands of the Almighty. Each one of us has been given the same amount of time: 24 hours each day, 168 hours each week. That is God’s gift to us. Our gift back to Him is in how we use it.

We are to understand the biblical truth that says,

A life without balance . . . leads to an unbalanced life!

So . . . how do we keep our eyes from getting too big? The key is to keep them fixed on the Author and Finisher of our faith. We can get so focused on ministry that we can miss our Master. What we must remember is there is a time for serving and a time for sitting; if we neglect the latter, the former will suffer . . . and so will everyone around us!

I thank my God for bringing people into my life who remind me of this incredibly important biblical truth. And I pray that this word of encouragement will be a reminder for you to maintain that biblical balance too.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!    

Years ago a computer virus known as “The Love Bug” traveled the globe by e-mail, infecting millions of computers in the span of less than 24 hours. Even those who were considered to be experts in the field of technology and trained in the art of identifying potentially suspect e-mails simply could not resist opening this message bearing the magnetic title, “I love you!”

We are all looking for love. We have been wired to look for love. The challenge for all of us is that we have a tendency to look for it in all the wrong places, as the old country song says. Created by God for God and made in the image of God, we are creatures who crave love. We have been created with a heart-shaped hole in our soul that can only be satisfied when it is filled with the love of our Creator. Nothing smaller than the love of God will do.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Here Paul made it clear to the Christians at Ephesus—and to you and me today—that there is no love in the universe that will satisfy like the love of the Almighty. God’s love is fully and absolutely sufficient! The measures that Paul used in his prayer almost surely were intended to point us back to the image of the Temple, which Paul had just referenced in Ephesians 2:21.

• Wide – the breadth of every one of our experiences in both life and death
• Long – the length of our lives from our first breath of life throughout all of eternity
• High – the height of our greatest joys
• Deep – the depth of our greatest sorrows . . . and ultimately death itsel

God’s love, which is expressed to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, is as immeasurable as it is inexhaustible. And as often as we run away from God’s love, as we seek to find love in all the wrong places, God is always in hot pursuit of rebels on the run. God loves us so much that He will not let smaller loves satisfy us and meet us in our place of deepest need. God created us to find meaning, purpose, significance, and satisfaction in Him alone. When our identity is rooted in Him, His love is rescuing us from countless smaller loves that are trying to divide our affections.

When the Bible tells us that God’s love is a “jealous” love, we must not think of Shakespeare’s thoughts in Othello, that jealousy “is the green-eyed monster.” Our understanding of jealousy has dark overtones of the sinful self, rooted in greed. But when applied biblically to our God, we find a love that is zealous about protecting, caring for, and loving what is the object of His affection: His chosen children. And if you have trusted in Christ’s atoning death on your behalf, that includes you!

God will tolerate NO rival. He wants the absolute best for every one of His children, and He demonstrated this truth by sending His beloved Son to die for our sins. In doing so, God declared the one thing that we all desperately want and need to hear:

“Dear child, I LOVE YOU! Yours for eternity, God.”

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!    

Why do you do what you do? Why do you pursue the things of God rather than chase after the things of this world? Your answer to that question will reveal both the motive and motivation behind all that you do.

Basically it comes down to one of two reasons: either we do what we do because of a heart that overflows with gratitude to God for what He has already given us . . . or because of what we are hoping and expecting to get.

Which is it for you? Does your heart beat for Jesus because of what He has already done for you and given to you? Or do you follow God in the hopes of what you will get? We either seek to serve God out of a desire to gain some kind of blessing or because we have already received it.

Christ’s love compels us. (1 Corinthians 5:14)

The word compel in this context does not mean what we might expect; when he hear the word “compel,” we might think the early Christians were “coerced” or “forced” to do what they did. Those words communicate the fear of consequences or a focus on some kind of reward. You could call that a “carrot-and-stick” approach to Christianity.

However, Paul’s use of compel in his letter to the Corinthians is as profound and powerful as it is positive. Paul was not motivated by fear of any consequence or focused on any kind of reward; rather, what he did he did as a result of what God in Christ had already done for him. The love of Christ was richly displayed in His atoning sacrifice, taking Paul’s sin and death and nailing it to the cross . . . this truth compelled Paul to respond to His Savior.

Christ’s love lifted Paul above the challenges of daily living. Paul kept the picture of a bleeding Savior hung on Paul’s cross before him—taking Paul’s nails, and wearing Paul’s crown of thorns—and this was the source of his strength in service to God. Paul was both compelled and impelled to live for the One who lived, died, and rose from the grave for him. He was overwhelmed by the love of Christ, a love that would go to such great lengths for the object of its affection.

You see, Paul knew what he was and what he was deserving of, which was nothing short of hell and eternal separation from the love and mercy of God. But instead of getting what he deserved, Paul received the unmerited, undeserved love of his Lord.

When you and I have been seized by that truth, we can begin to plumb the depths of what it means to live a life that is compelled by the love of Christ. Only when we are fully convinced that we don’t deserve anything less than the full weight of God’s wrath and judgment will the love of Christ begin to transform our lives. As the “chief sinner,” Paul knew he deserved the worst possible punishment, but instead he had received God’s grace and mercy. This Gospel truth renewed his mind, reoriented his heart, and redirected his will. Only Christ’s love can do that!

So . . . what is the “Why” of your witness? If it is anything smaller than Christ’s love, you will always be left wanting.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN! 

Older readers—and, I hope, some younger ones as well—will smile in their hearts when they hear the first lovely strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1965 classic, The Sound of Music:

“The hills are alive with the sound of music . . .”

I don’t know if the two composers intended to or not, but they beautifully captured the truth of Scripture in that lyric. In the beginning, the supernatural sound of our Master’s music permeated every aspect of His creation. Everything created was created as a hymn to His glory, including our first two parents in the Garden. There was a holy harmony—both vertically, between man and God, and horizontally, between man and creation, and not one note was out of tune . . . until Adam and Eve decided to sing a different song from the one God had written. Our first parents created the sound of madness rather than music.

Adam and Eve decided to sing their own song, one which began with a sour, ugly refrain: “Did God really say . . . ?” and every note that followed struck the wrong cord. God’s holy harmony was replaced by man’s unholy disharmony, which leads to division, disease, and despair.

But God, in His infinite mercy and grace, did not leave us in our discordant mess. He promised to send a Savior to reconnect us with the supernatural sound of His music. To be sure, there is a rhythm to our redemption, one that reconnects us to our Redeemer God and each other because of the new song God puts in our heart.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:1-3)

You see, our new song sings the praises of our God once again. We are reconnected to our Creator Composer as our hearts begin to beat for nothing smaller than our Savior. God lifts us out of the slimy pit and places us in His song-filled palace. He removes us from the mud and mire and recalibrates our hearts to reconnect with the Master’s music. We go from the beat of the temporal to the beauty of the eternal. We begin making music that has meaning and singing supernatural songs that connect us to eternal significance.

The complex beauty of this supernatural sound of music lies in the fact that it is different for all of us. We are not all reading from the same “sheet music,” but rather God has provided us with both the space and structure to connect our song with His song. God is calling us out of our self-absorbed, self-centered existence and into a sphere of song that beats eternal.

Remember, there is no firm footing when we are playing our own music apart from our Cosmic Composer. It is only when we have aligned our song with His song, through the rhythm of our redemption, that we will rise above the ashes of defeat and the waves of challenge, singing again the supernatural sounds of our Master’s music.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!    

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, I’m sure you’ve recognized that my overall goal for Grace for the Race is that the articles which appear every week will offer you encouragement and provide comfort. From time to time I have been told that I have succeeded in that goal.

And yet there is another written source that is guaranteed to bring us all encouragement and comfort . . . and so much more!

Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)

No hit and miss here. EVERYTHING that was written in God’s inspired, inerrant, infallible Word is there to teach, encourage, and give us enduring hope. Of course, when the apostle Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans, he was pointing back to the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, because that is all his readers had at that time. You and I have the entire Bible, which has been given to us to meet us in our deepest place of need.

There is a “cosmic comfort” that is found only in the Bible. The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), and breathes comfort into our lives that will only be found on the other side of reading, marinating, and meditating on it.

So . . . how much time do you spend in God’s Word each day?

We simply cannot receive the comfort the Scriptures are designed to provide unless we read what was written. As I often say, the book you don’t read won’t help! And there is no book that has ever been written that provides more help and hope than God’s Holy Word. One of the things I have learned from watching others closely is that the more they have worn out their Bible, the less they have worn out their lives. Those who are living in and living out the Scriptures have a freshness and a resilience that you just don’t see in other people.

When you find yourself in need, where do you go for help? When you come to the Scriptures, you can be sure you will leave them better than when you came. Endurance is promised to those who are running on empty. Encouragement is promised to those who are buried under the waves of challenge. Hope is promised to those who are in circumstances that seem, on the surface, as utterly hopeless. Only the Word of God can do that for you, and it will do it over and over again. No doubt you’ve been reading the Scriptures when a verse or passage that you’d read dozens of times suddenly provided you with a nugget of wisdom that you’d never seen there before. The more you read the Bible, the more it reads you!

It is one thing to receive a word of comfort from a family member or a friend. God uses those words to bless us in supernatural ways. But as important as those words from others are to us, it is another thing altogether to receive the Word of the Living God, the Word that knows us better then we can know ourselves. You and I read God’s Word, and we are convinced it was written just for us! Why? Because God’s infinite wisdom meets each one of us in our particular place of personal need with just the kind of cosmic comfort that we so desperately need.

So read the Word of God for comfort; read it for endurance; read it for hope. But most importantly, read it because God gave it to you to read with a promise to give you everything you need . . . in both life and death. You have His Word on it!!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “You were born an original . . . don’t die a copy!” Today I want to encourage you with the biblical truth that you were born a copy, and the ultimate goal for our lives is to die looking as much like the original as possible.

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Each man, woman and child is unique, born as “originals” compared to every other person ever born. At the same time, however, we all are created in the image of God. We are “copies” of our Creator, and our deep desire should be to live in such a way as to reflect this truth for all the world to see.

Basically, the purpose of an “image” is to image! We are made in the image of God, so we are to image (that is, reflect the likeness of) the One who made us, so that the world will be filled with pictures pointing to the Lord who created us.

Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. (Isaiah 43:6-7)

In all of the created order, only man is made in the image of God. A tree is a tree; a turtle is a turtle; a mountain is a mountain. But humans are image-bearers of the Creator; as such, we are to live lives that glorify God.

Adam and Eve did this perfectly in the Garden of Eden. They walked and talked with God in the cool of the day and cared for that which had been placed under their care. They reflected their Creator perfectly . . . until they decided that they wanted to be gods. We see immediately after the fall just how distorted that image became. Adam and Eve were suddenly filled with terror and they fled and tried to hide from God.

That’s the bad news. The image of God inside every person has been marred. We have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Romans 1:23). The good news is that though image has been disfigured, it has not been destroyed. We are still image-bearers of God, and the way we choose to live our lives will either bring glory to our Creator . . . or not. Every day those of us who have placed our trust in Jesus Christ have a choice: will we live for our Creator or for created things?

So . . . knowing that you have been born a copy of your Creator, will you die as one? Life is brief. We are all dying at the rate of 60 minutes an hour. With the little bit of time we have left on this earth, what better way could we live than to live for the glory of the One who created us?

We are all living for some glory. Some seek the glory of acclaim, others accomplishment, while still others seek the glory of the applause of man. However, as image-bearers of the Most High God, we are to seek the glory of our Creator, refusing to live for anything smaller than Jesus.

Christian, the God of the universe predestined you to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:28). That is the call that has been placed on our lives. So then, let us strive to live in such a way that we die as copies of Christ!

I’d like to close with a quote from an old friend of Cross Community Church, “the prince of preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

Never belie thy profession. Be thou ever one of those whose manners are Christian, whose speech is like the Nazarene, whose conduct and conversation are so redolent of heaven, that all who see you may know that you are the Savior’s, recognizing in you His features of love and His countenance of holiness. “I am a Roman!” was of old a reason for integrity; far more, then, let it be your argument for holiness, “I am Christ’s!”

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!