It is one thing to understand the gospel but is quite another to experience the gospel in such a way that it fundamentally changes us and becomes the source of our identity and security.

It’s not that I didn’t understand or believe the gospel before. I did. But the truth of the gospel hadn’t moved from my mind to my heart. There was a huge gap between my intellect and my emotions. The Puritan Jonathan Edwards likened his reawakening to the gospel to a man who had known, in his head, that honey was sweet, but for the first time had that sweetness burst alive in his mouth.

My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.

The gospel has done its work in us when we crave God more than we crave everything else in life and when seeing His kingdom advance in the lives of others gives us more joy than anything we could own. When we see Jesus as greater than anything the world can offer, we’ll gladly let everything else go to possess Him.

When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it.

Gospel change is the Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts

We are changed not by being told what we need to do for God, but by hearing the news about what God has done for us.

Being able to articulate the gospel with accuracy is one thing; having its truth captivate your soul is quite another.