Euanthe's Monday Memo

The Gospel: It's Everything!

First off, a big welcome to the team from Harvest Barrie! So great to have them here to worship and serve alongside us this week.

On Sunday we had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Mike Armstrong, the Families Ministries Pastor at Harvest Barrie, who brought us a solid word from Galatians 1.

Grace to you and peace from God our

father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave

himself for our sins to deliver us from the

present evil age, according to the will of our

God and Father, to whom be the glory forever

and ever. Amen. Galatians 1:3-5 (Gospel in a nutshell)

As believers, no matter what our story may be, the gospel saved us and daily needs to change us. But the question we were given to consider is: Do I cherish the gospel and have a deep appreciation for it? I like what Mike said that we cannot treat the gospel like a newspaper where we read the headlines and then throw it away never to think about it again. From the verses posted above we see these three things:

a. That we are helpless and lost-we need to be rescued

b. We learn what was done to deliver us-Jesus paid it all

c. We see why God did it- He's gracious

Such short verses, yet jammed pack with truth. We need to saturate our hearts and minds with the gospel of Christ and fully see that nothing compares to it. When we do, we'll be able to:

1.Treasure it more than anything

Its not simply the ABC's of the christian life its the A-Z's…the gospel is EVERYTHING. We need to be daily transformed by the power of the gospel and grow in our appreciation of it.

2. Recognize the counterfeits

What are you leaning on more than Christ to make you complete? Looks and appearance? Success and money? Intellect? Athletics? Popularity? Are you living with a "Christ + __________" mentality? We need to fully realize that these are not worth putting our trust in and preach the gospel to ourselves to counteract these fake gospels.

3. Relentlessly defend it

The gospel is not something we understand once and then never think about it again. If we lose the heart of the gospel we've not nothing! We need to stand up for the truth, be able to discern truth, error, and half truths, and let the gospel take root deep in our hearts.

I want to challenge you this week to ask yourself just how much you treasure the gospel. Take another look at the 7 ways Mike gave us to grow in our appreciation of the gospel:

Recognize my depravity

Confess and repent of sin every day

Study it

Think about it

Talk about it

Read good books that explain the gospel

Listen to gospel centred preaching

Lets all get to the point where absolutely everything is secondary to the gospel!

Be praying this week for both the Harvest Barrie and Harvest Glasgow teams as we serve together for our Son Surf holiday club and for the activities that will be taking place in the evenings.

You are loved,

E