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John Wooden

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The Transforming Power of the Gospel

I am not sure if you have ever read anything from Elyse Fitzpatick but she is easily becoming one of my favorite authors. I truly love her insight on counseling and gospel centrality. She does a wonderful job isolating counseling principles and coupling them with gospel truths. Her latest article on The Gospel Coalition site is a great addition and can be read in full here. These three parts of the article stood out the most to me:

“How do we grow in holiness?” Further, most of us would answer the “How?” question in this way, “We grow in holiness through the gospel.” And while that’s the right answer, the possibility exists that it’s not specific enough to be of real help.

It is this entire gospel message that Paul says is “of first importance.” The gospel is more than just the cross. When we fail to appreciate all the other facets of the good news about His work, we’ll be tempted to use Jesus’ suffering on the cross to motivate obedience. In other words, we’ll be tempted to feel sorry for the victim Jesus and try to guilt ourselves (and others) into submission, rather than seeing the victor, Jesus, who acted purposefully throughout His existence and acts powerfully upon us to transform us.

Because of the incarnation, Jesus Christ knows exactly what it is to live in a sin-cursed world with people who break the rules…like me. I am a rule-breaker but He’s loved me and he’s experienced every trial I face. He’s with me. He sympathizes with my weakness (Hebrews 4:15).

I am hoping these three quotes will help you choose to read the whole article so I am posting a link to it at the end, right here, again.

How to talk to my kids about adoption?

These days are quickly coming upon us as the boys get older and ask questions. Just yesterday one of the boys was touching the tummy of one of his school teachers who is pregnant causing questions at home. My wife has read lots of great things about how to do this as well and has handled the questions wonderfully so far.

I really like the idea presented by Julie Lowe about not wanting to hide God's story in their life. Some parts of the story are going to be great while other parts of the story are going to be incredibly hard. It is a great lesson to learn that not all of our stories are wonderful and not all of our stories are going to be difficult, but in the end God is in control of all of them.

As I struggle with what I want to say, and as Adriane and I struggle to find the right words I want to always make sure it is pointing back to the Lord. In the end He is the one who makes families and has great plans for the families that He creates. I want our boys to love our family and to me that means that they are being cultivated for gospel centered lives.

Announcing beta.desiringgod.org

Announcing beta.desiringgod.org

An Example of Sin, Grace, and Mercy Baseball Style

I suppose I knew that Facebook had a lot of power, but this really drives the point home well. What does it look like to spread the gospel in a world that is communicating differently than ever before? It is hard to believe the church can ignore this major communication shift. Our whole point is to communicate the one truth so it rises above the noise. Well the world has gotten a lot noisier.