Access By Faith

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2

Consider the word access. Access is the the ability you have to approach or enter a place, to see someone or to receive a benefit. What right do you have to come before God this morning and enjoy peace with him, experience his grace, and rejoice in his glory?
Consider this scenario, which will be familiar to most of you. You are driving down the freeway, late for a very important meeting. You usually always obey the speed limit but this time you are definitely speeding because you need to make it to this appointment on time. As you come up over a hill your heart drops. You see a squad car in the median just waiting for someone like you.
As you pass him you look at your speedometer and realize that you were even going faster than you thought you were. He pulls onto the freeway and begins following you. The squad car lurks menacingly in your rearview mirror as you know what is coming. The blue and red lights flip on and you pull over as your hands start sweating and your heart starts beating.
Now, consider this scenario. The same squad car and the same law enforcement officer returns home at the end of his shift. He pulls that same squad car into his driveway as his three little children come bounding up to him. He puts the vehicle in park, and they run up to the car ready to give their dad hugs and kisses. They are happy to see him in his uniform and delighted with him being home.
What was the main difference between those two experiences? Why was the driver fearful and the children happy? The children had access to come to him as a father, not as a punisher of their wrong doing. The same is true with God.
We can experience God’s peace, his grace, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God because we have access to him by faith. Don’t ever miss that or get numb to that! We have access to a gloriously holy, sin-punishing, wrath-avenging God that would make a volcano look like a wax candle. God’s children don’t experience that. They experience the peace that passes all understanding which he gives to them. They experience the the all sufficient grace which helps us in our weakness. They experience the overflowing hope of his glory.
The only reason we can experience this is because of the faith that we have put in the work that Jesus Christ did. When his body was ripped apart, the curtain in the temple ripped in two. This symbolized us no longer having to go to priests to gain access to God. We can go to him directly, confess our sins, repent, and rejoice in Jesus Christ because he died and rose again and conquered death.

Interview Your Devotions

Last year (2015) I started a different approach to my Bible reading. I had been reading through the Bible in a year, which was beneficial in many ways. Getting an overview of the Bible in 365 days gave me a wide angle lens of the narrative of God’s Word but I wanted to switch lenses and go narrower and slower. I wanted to suck more of the juices out of what I was reading.

Donald Whitney in his book Spiritual Disciplines advocated for bringing questions to my devotional time as a way to do that. It made sense I thought. My job hangs on the ability to ask good questions when I go to calls. If I don’t ask questions I don’t get the answers I need to allow me to make good decisions on what happened and to figure out what kind of crime/s happened. Good, persistent questions usually produce good results for the cop.

I bough a Moleskin, wrote Whitney’s four questions on the inside cover and got to work in January 2015. I am now 14 months into this process and the experience has been satisfying. Really satisfying. Usually I will take one chapter a day and read through it. I’ll read some commentary and the study notes in my Bible and spend time meditating on certain parts of the chapter. Usually what happens is that after I read through the chapter the first time I see one or two truths, promises or commands. However, after I slow down, read the passages again, think on what I read and then begin to answer the questions, beauty and wonder begins to jump off the page. I’m able to see things and make connections that had not happened with a cursory reading.

Since last year I have modified Whitney’s questions slightly and added three more questions that seem to fill in some gaps that Whitney’s questions didn’t cover. Here they are:

1. What does this text tell me about God?
2. What does this text tell me about myself or humanity?
3. Doest his text reveal something I should thank, praise or trust God for?
4. Based on this text is there anything I need to repent of?
5. How does this text lead me to Jesus?
6. Does this text reveal something I should do for the sake of Christ, others or myself?
7. Does this text reveal something I should pray about for myself or others?

This process is work. It takes work to think through it and write my observations down on paper. I need quietness and time to work through these questions, but almost always the results will reveal something I did not see from reading the text through the first time. This process draws out the sweetness, the depth, and the power of God’s Word in ways I hadn’t seen before.

“Welcome to Christ, And Greater Sorrow”

How does a cop deal with a conveyor belt of sin night after night and not expect to get desensitized to it all? Sin drenched calls seem to come in pairs or triplets. Recently I had the trifecta of three calls that spotlighted the sinfulness of sin and it left me with a sorrow over the brokenness that exists all around me.

The first call was a seemingly easy one in which I was to meet with someone that had been kicked out of his house because he couldn’t get along with his parents. Assuming it was an adult living at home with his parents still, I went to a gas station to meet with the person. Instead of an adult I found a 12 year old boy sitting at a table, crying at 10:30PM on a school night. He had walked a half mile from his house to the gas station in subzero temperatures, all the while wearing a sweatshirt and pants (no hat or gloves).

He had been there for 45 minutes and his mom still hadn’t called to report him gone. He told me about his problems with his mom and how he wanted to go live with his Dad. The whole family situation was a disaster. His Dad was out of the picture, his mom parented from a disposition of anger, and he had no desire to obey his mom. He refused to go back to his mom’s house and it took an hour and a half and every ounce of persuasiveness I had to talk him into it.

The second call came right after that. A girl had been told by her friend that her dad had an ongoing and repeated pattern of molesting her and her sister. I gathered all the awful details of the incident and just as I cleared that call I received a message to call our dispatch.

They had received a call from a man (at first we didn’t know where he was but eventually tracked him down to Texas) who said he had a handgun and was going to kill himself. The area code was not a local one and they were unsure of how to handle it. I took the phone number down and called it, just to see if I could talk to this guy.

A drunken man answered my phone call. Over the next 40 minutes I had a conversation with him about his days in the military and his experiences during the worst part of the Iraq war. He went into details about how he watched his friends get blown up or killed and how he watched them die in his arms. He was medicating his depression with alcohol but wasn’t sure how to move past the memories etched into his mind that haunted his dreams while asleep and racked his brain while awake. I couldn’t hold back on what he needed to hear so I shared with him the gospel. He then said he was going to make himself a sandwich and our conversation ended.

Over the course of five hours I had a front row seat to all of this brokenness and was trying to process it. I didn’t really solve anything during the course of those hours. All the situations were still as bad as they were before I received the calls to my computer screen in my car.

That night I listened to a podcast episode by John Piper where he talked about II Corinthians 6:8-10. His comments rang with deep affirmation in my heart:

One of the most amazing things about becoming a Christian is that it awakens you to more sorrow. You come to Christ and you are not naïve. You suddenly wake up to pain. Of course there is pain for unbelievers, but they have no sense of how big it is, how horrible it is, or how long it can endure. To be a Christian is to be awake to cancer and birth defects and profound mental disabilities and divorce and child abuse including abortion and terrorism and earthquakes and tsunamis and racial hostilities and prejudices and white-collar crime and sex trafficking and poverty and hunger and a thousand daily frustrations that make life very hard. Every Christian is increasingly sensitized to these things.

The gospel brings life, right? And living things are awake and alert and touchable by other things. Which means, welcome to Christ and greater sorrow. I have little patience with ministries that sell Jesus with the promise that he will make your life easier. He doesn’t. I promise you. He makes it real. He makes it eternal. And he makes the joy in it indomitable and invincible, but so do your sorrows rise. Come to Jesus and learn how to weep. The world doesn’t know how to weep for lost people. They are one. They don’t even believe in it. They don’t believe in hell. They don’t see to the bottom of anyone’s pain. They see pain. They feel pain. But they don’t see to the bottom of it. Christians are the saddest people in the world — and the happiest.

So the gospel brings life, and in this life comes sensitivity to reality, and reality is really sad in a not-yet-saved world.

This is how I refrain from becoming desensitized to it all. The gospel is life giving and I am meant to feel the weight of sorrow from a world that is broken. Yet I am also to feel hope for a day coming in which Jesus will make all things right in a new heaven and a new earth. The best is yet to come. So I press on toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, one more shift at a time.

Seeing God in Everything

“A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of growth in grace and a thankful heart.” —Charles G. Finney

The morning was one of grey skies, cloud cover and steady drizzle. I shuffled through lines, displayed my driver’s license, had someone stare at a ghost like image of my naked body through a full body scanner, and waited at the gate for my plane to fly out. The airport buzzed and hummed with the normalcy of travelers bustling from one place to the next with sights set on their next destination.

Everything was routine. The weather was mundane. There was nothing spectacular that was occurring. I sat in my in window seat and watched the raindrops scurry across the window as the plane gained speed and elevation. The distance between us and the thick, grey cloud cover lessoned, and then it all happened so quickly. Like a blink of the eye. Like a thief in the night. This tube that had two engines strapped to it punched through the clouds to display a crystal clear atmosphere that was set on fire by a ball of fire 93 million miles away from me.

In the course of five seconds the interior of our plane went from dark and cool to bright and warm, filled with the rays of the sun. My first thought was that the second coming of Jesus will be like this. My second thought was that Jesus will be even more bright and brilliant and glorious as this sun penetrating its light through my window.

Everything in this universe relates back to God because he is the Author of it all. Finney was right in helping us think on what our state of mind should be as we go through the day to day routine of life. We can see God not just on Sunday mornings, or in small group, or in a theological book that we may read. God is not just to be thought about on Christmas and Easter. For those who follow Jesus, they should see an ever increasing awareness of how everything relates back to God.

This indeed is pure grace and evidence of a thankful heart. Kindle that type of mindset.

Going and Sending Starts With Receiving

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all the nations. Let the people praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.” Psalm 67:1-3

Grace Church, we now begin missions week. This is a missions Psalm. The writer of this Psalm had a desire that God’s nature (who he is) and God’s salvation (what he does) would be known not only among his own people but among all peoples in all nations. How does he ask for this to happen?

He asks for God to show and display his grace and his blessing to himself and to his nation so that other nations may see it and praise their God. This means that when it comes to missions and sending people out to proclaim the gospel the main factor in all of this is not the goer or the sender. The main factor in all of this is God who demonstrated his grace and his blessing by taking on flesh and dwelling among us sinners. What a glorious gospel this is! No god in any other religion does this.

The work we are calling our church to this week is to be radical senders or radical goers. Yet our acceptability before God is not dependent on the amount of money we give to missionaries, or how many letters we write, or how many missionaries we send to unreached people groups. What God requires of us he freely gives us through his grace and his blessing in the perfect and complete work of Jesus Christ. Radical going and sending starts with receiving.

Jesus was the ultimate missionary. He stepped off this throne in heaven and stooped down to serve us and die for us. So our prayer today is that God would be gracious to us and bless us so that we may display that for the world to see.

A Confidently, Content Exhortation

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:5-6

This morning I would like to use this exhortation to not only remind us of our need for Jesus, but to pray for a family that has been very special to Grace Church. We have many new families that have come here over the past two years so a quick history lesson is in order.

Daniel Patz was the pastor of this church for ten years. He and his wife Molly labored faithfully here and their family grew to five kids during their time here. Daniel was a loving shepherd to this people. He left two years ago after we as elders confidently, yet with sadness, affirmed God’s leading of him and his family away from this church and to Northland International University in Dunbar, WI.

He has led the school for the last two years through some extremely difficult times. Their situation looked hopeful last year as they received the backing from another, larger institution that agreed to take them under their umbrella. Last week, abruptly, they received news that this larger institution was rescinding their support. No doubt this has created confusion, frustration and worry.

I bring this to our attention this morning because I want us, as a body of believers who love the Patz’s and are thankful for their work at this church, to pray for them. Let us pray that the students, staff and leadership would have wisdom for their future and trust for their provision. Let us pray that they would not be bitter as they experience feelings of hurt and betrayal. Let us pray that in their sorrow they would be rejoicing.

Our Fighter Verse this week is fitting for this. At its core is the command for us to be content with what we have and where we are. That core is bursting with the promise that God will never leave us and that he is our Helper. That promise is so massive that we do not need to fear anything that this world can throw at us.

The most powerful forces of this world have nothing on us as children of God, bought by the blood of Christ. The strongest man cannot ultimately overcome us. The most powerful ruler cannot definitely enslave us. The worst financial depression cannot ultimately bankrupt us.

Oh, we can indeed lose everything in this life Grace Church. Cancer can eat our body. A terrorist can take your life. A loss of a job could cause you to lose your house. Yet in all of this, the best is yet to come. Why?

Because God is our helper, we will not fear, what can man do to us? If God is for us, no one can be against us.

Let’s pray.

The Comfort of The Gospel

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom shall I see for myself and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job 19:25-27

I read this passage during my devotional time this week and had a soul-satisfying time thinking about what it means for me. Grace Church, today, right now Jesus lives. We can know that our Redeemer lives and at the end of this story we are living in, he will stand up on the earth.

Often it doesn’t feel like that. Ten people die in an attack at the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli, Libya. Two thousand people were killed by Boka Haram in Nigeria with most of the victims being women and children. Our sinful flesh persists as we do things we don’t want to do. Loved ones die. Sickness cripples. Our bodies are slowly wasting away. In the midst of all this tragedy and ongoing decay, where do we find comfort?

Where did you go for comfort this week when you chose to sin? Where did you go for comfort when you were blind-sided by depression or frustrated with a co-worker or angry at your spouse or just plain tired at the end of a long day? Did you find comfort in food or Netflix or exercise or sleep or anything else besides the gospel? If your soul first and foremost went to anything less than the truth and joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, your soul was choosing to quench its thirst by drinking from a tobacco spitter instead of the clear and refreshing water that Jesus Christ offers. Anything less than Jesus cannot and will not satisfy because nothing is more real and more true than the fact that Jesus lives and he stands ready to forgive.

Come to Jesus this morning. Behold his face and not another. The only reason you can be acceptable to God this morning and removed from his wrath for your sin is by drinking from the water of Jesus Christ’s grace and mercy through the cross.

God in the Manger

“And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” (Luke 2:16-20)

As I get older and the Christmas’ stack on top of each year after year, I am becoming increasingly aware of the shallowness with which I’ve approached this time of year. The casualness and the familiarization of Christmas can have a dulling effect on the spiritual senses and I lose sight of the awe in which I should approach this time of year.

This is the time of year that we celebrate God in the manger! Luke writes that the shepherds ran to the manger and saw the Maker of the universe laying in manger; laying in materials like hay and wood that he himself had spoken into existence. The shepherds were in awe. Those who heard the shepherds tell of these things were in awe. Mary treasured these things in her heart.

My wife and I are reading an advent devotional this year by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called God in the Manger. This week we read, “What is going on here, where Mary becomes the mother of God, where God comes in the world in the lowliness of the manger? World judgement and world redemption- that is what’s happening here. And it is the Christ child in the manger himself who holds world judgement and world redemption. He pushes back the high and might; he humbles the haughty; his arm exercises power over all the high and mighty; he lifts what is lowly, makes it great and glorious in his mercy (42).”

Thank God for awakening me to the strength and majesty and glory that is found in this story. It is not a simple, cute story. It is a story of the dawning of our redemption for without the incarnation there would be no crucifixion, and without the crucifixion there would be no resurrection, and without the resurrection there would be no salvation.

Look to the redemption we find only through Jesus Christ. This baby lying in the manger was the lamb that was slaughtered to bring us redemption. Find new awe in it as we come before King Jesus. He is no longer in a manger, no longer on a cross, no longer in a tomb, but now sitting on the throne of the universe holding all things in his hands!

Cast Your Burdens

Psalm 55:22

“Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

We come before God this morning and experiencing his mercy and grace not because of a righteousness of our own making. When we read here that the righteous will not be moved, the righteousness that keeps us from not moving in the face of Satan’s accusations is that of the perfect, complete and eternal work of Jesus Christ. So come this morning and feast at the table of forgiveness by casting your burden on the on the LORD for he will sustain you.

We have a Father this morning that beckons for us to come to him as his children because of this work done by our elder brother, Jesus Christ. Because of the gospel we can come before him despite our…

• Lust-filled choices,
• pride-centered works,
• gossip-motivated tongue,
• confusion-causing circumstances,
• weak and broken heart,
• anger-producing hearts,
• quickly irritable hearts,
• lazy, self-centered hearts,
• and selfish producing hearts.

And the list goes on. Come to this table of fellowship this morning with your brothers and sisters in Christ and cast your burdens, cast your sins, on the one who caught them all, killed them all, and paid the price for them all. Come and take full joy in our Abba Father this morning.

Tyler and Anna

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17

Tyler and Anna, this verse has been a meaningful one for you in your relationship. You have rightly seen each other as a gift from God and that gift has led you to the this day. You are about to enter a covenant relationship that is like no other on earth. It is a relationship that God intends to only be severed by death. On this day, August 15th, 2014 you two will become one flesh and this verse has much to say about how you should view this day and the rest of your lives together.

James tells us that God is the source of everything. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” It was this way from the very beginning of creation. At one point there was no earth or sun or moon or galaxies or animals or sea creatures or human beings. God formed and crafted this earth through spoken words. Out of nothing came everything. When God spoke planets began spinning into their assigned orbit, vast oceans met dry land and formed shorelines, sunrises and sunsets began a constant rhythm that have not failed to this day. Birds began flying, bugs began crawling, lions began roaring, dolphins began swimming and Adam began breathing. God was the source of this all.

We see that God has given us an entire world that he called good. He made it for us to enjoy. He made Adam and Eve to enjoy each other. There is not one single thing you have received in this life that has not been from your heavenly Father. Each of us sitting in these pews or standing at this altar will not breathe a single breath unless God grants it to us. He speaks and new life is born. He speaks and old life is stopped. He speaks and storms are silenced or spun into existence. Let us humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God who is the source of everything. To him alone belongs glory.

Not only is God the source of everything but he is the giver of everything. God did not speak this world into existence, wind it up like a mechanical watch, and walk away from it all. He gives good gifts and perfect gifts to us. He is like a generous father who loves to shower his children with presents on Christmas morning.

Some of these gifts we are keenly aware of, like a spouse, or a job we enjoy, or good health, or forgiveness through the cross for our sinful hearts. Many of these gifts we are unaware of and don’t even think about. Did you wake up this morning and breathe without pain? That was a gift from God. Did you drive to this church tonight without getting into a car crash? That was a gift from God. Did you enjoy a bottle of water this afternoon or some food to satisfy your hungry stomach? That was a gift from God. What a wonderful and loving God we have who gives us good and perfect gifts!

James also wants us to know that God uses these gifts as a way in which to show the personal relationship he has with his children. He gives us exactly what we need, when we need it. The gospel of Jesus Christ saves enemies of God, brings them into the family of God, and gives them access to God’s grace and mercy and love.

God does not only give us good and perfect gifts that are material and tangible but he gives us so much more.Tyler and Anna, you were at some point in your life under God’s wrath because of your sinfulness. Your sin separated you from a God that is more awesome and beautiful than you could ever imagine. Through Christ living the life you could never live, dying the death you should have died, and conquering the power of sin, death and Satan, he has brought you into a personal relationship with God. This reality rests squarely on the Jesus Christ; your cornerstone.

“Christ alone; cornerstone. Weak made strong; in the Savior’s love. Through the storm, He is Lord. Lord of all.”

Finally, we see that God is unchangeable. “With whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” We live in a constant state of change. Things that seem so lasting and permanent can be snuffed out or taken away in a heartbeat. A home with all earthly goods and possessions can turn into ashes on one bitterly cold evening in December. Life is but a vapor. We are here one day and gone the next.

Yet, God does not change. His attributes and promises are never changing and will never change. The same God that spoke this world into existence is the same God ruling over this marriage ceremony right now. If God is unchanging that means his promises are unchanging. If his promises are unchanging nothing in this life can separate us from his love! “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:36-39).”

What do these four truths have to do with marriage then? Everything. Matthew Henry describes God this way: “What the sun is in nature, God is in grace, providence, and glory; yes and infinitely more.” Just as the sun is the source by which we see, experience and enjoy life, so God is the source by which our lives are completely dependent. We are in desperate need of his sovereignty, grace and glory whether we realize it or not.

If God is the source of everything and the giver of everything, he will be the source of your marriage and the sustainer of your marriage. You both are entering this covenant as a man and a woman in need of God’s grace and mercy.

Tyler and Anna, you will have times where you will be exhausted with life. You will have times when the trials are deep and the road is dangerous. You will have times where you will experience circumstances that never entered into your realm of thinking. You will have times of disagreement and frustration. God has storehouses of gifts in the form of his help and grace and love waiting to be poured out on you for those very instances. Cry out to God in these times together and you will find a depth of God’s comfort and strength that you will have never known in times of plenty and comfort. And when times are good and plentiful, be thankful that every good gift and every perfect gift is from the Father of lights.

God is a personal God and displays this through the gifts he gives. Tyler and Anna, he has given each of you unique roles within marriage for you to fulfill. He has not given them to you as a burden or as a mere duty to obey, but as a good gift to be enjoyed when you act your part the way God designed.

Tyler, God created Adam first and he gave him a mission. He was to tend to the garden and name the animals. Adam was the pinnacle of God’s creation, made in his own image. You were created to orient yourself to God and his work. Yet this was not enough for Adam. He needed a companion. Anna, God created Eve to orient herself to Adam as he orients himself towards God and his mission. Eve was made to provide friendship and support to Adam.

These are your God given roles designed to bring joy and delight in one another and in God. God is the Author of a story you are about to embark on and you two are actors in this drama. Will you play your part well to the glory of the One who made you?

Tyler, your role is to love your wife as “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).” Jesus’ relationship with the church cost him his life in order that they would be made lovely in the sight of God; holy and blameless.

Just as Jesus is the head of the church so you are the inescapable leader of your marriage. You will lead either through action or inaction, but you will lead. The kind of leadership and headship you are called to display is not one of dominance but one of being a servant. If an aroma of Christ is to be present in your home for all to see it will begin with you loving Anna as Christ loved the church. Your job is to show a world around you what Christ’s love for his church looks like by the way you love Anna. It’s the role of a lifetime! So treat her well, cherish her through sacrificial love, feed her spiritually, and protect her. Lay down your life for her.

Anna, your role is to submit to Tyler’s servant leadership. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22).” One of the primary ways you submit to Tyler’s leadership is through showing him respect. Honor him and submit to his leadership. Praise him when he leads well and encourage him when he doesn’t. Use your tongue to build him up and not tear him down through nagging or arguing.

Tyler and Anna, when you act out your roles in a God-honoring way you are writing a story. You are small parts in a bigger story that is being unfolded in God’s drama of redemption. It is a story that began with God’s creation of a perfect place where Adam and Eve lived in perfect relationship with God. When they stepped outside of their roles, sinned against God, and chose their own script, sin entered the world and corrupted everything. They were expelled from the garden and from that perfect relationship they had with God.

Then, Jesus Christ, the God-Man, stepped onto the stage. Where Adam failed Jesus succeeded. He resisted the temptation of Satan and won for himself his bride through the brutal, bloody and torturous death of a cross. He stood on the neck of Satan and offers life everlasting to those who would repent of their sin and put their trust squarely on the perfect work of Jesus Christ. He purchased us free passage into a promise land where one day we will all sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb. This is the gospel, Tyler and Anna.

You need the gospel. Not to just save you from your sins. You need the gospel for every day of your married life. There are going to be times that you will fail in living out your roles as husband and wife, just as Adam and Eve did. Tyler, you will fail to lead. Anna you will fail to submit. What will you do when this happens? Look to the cross.

Milton Vincent writes, “The gospel is not just one piece of good news that fits into my life somewhere among all the bad. I realize instead that the gospel makes genuinely good news out of every other aspect of my life.” The gospel is for every facet of your marriage. You are acceptable to God not based on your performance of your roles but based on the perfect work of Jesus Christ. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).” This is a good gift. Indeed it is a perfect gift. It is the greatest gift Jesus, the groom, could have given his bride, the church.

“This is the story of the Son of God Hanging on a cross for me But it ends with a bride and groom And a wedding by a glassy sea Oh, death, where is your sting? ‘Cause I’ll be there singing Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”

The best is yet to come.