Hey gang,

Our friend Richard asked me a question the other day about how to grow and renew our love for God. So I shot him back this response, and I feel it would be helpful to the rest of you. So here it is.


So I did some thinking about your question last night, and I came up with this. You wanted to know where/how to start renewing your relationship with God. Here's the biggest thing I've learned in the past few years: every single day, you need to be preaching the Gospel to yourself. The Gospel is the center of our relationship with God, and we cannot let go if it. The only way we can fight sin, grow in holiness, and love God and others more is to plunge ourselves into the ocean that is the Gospel. It is impossible to live a life that thoroughly honors God and keeps us growing towards Him if we don't understand the Gospel. Here's a quick rundown of what I try to do when I preach the Gospel to myself:

1) All of mankind was created by God to live out His character in the world. We are to show how great He is by our thoughts and actions.

2) I am a horrid sinner. I desire evil things that do not only hurt myself and others, but first and foremost my sin is against God. Every one of my sins screams at God, telling Him "You're not God, I am! You are not infinitely great and glorious and holy, You are a liar and not God!!!" Not only that, but I love my sin. And because of my sin, God deserves to punish me. The whole world, in fact, deserves this judgment. We deserve to have fire come down on us from heaven and consume us; it's amazing that you or I are not in hell already.

3) God sent Jesus Christ to live a perfect life, and then to die. Jesus took our sin and our judgment because we could not do it ourselves. We cannot get rid of our sin, our guilt, and our deserving judgment. Jesus came as the ultimate sacrifice for sin. God is perfectly holy and wrathful, and our sin makes us deserving of death and hell. Yet, He is loving and merciful and gracious, and instead of sending us to hell, He sends his Son so that we can be saved from His wrath and our sin. When we believe in Him for eternal life, our sin is taken from us, and we are made righteous before God and we no longer deserve judgment and destruction. And we have been given the Holy Spirit, who works within us to keep us growing in holiness. We now have perfect, unrestricted access to God, and we no longer are deserving of judgment. We still sin, and will continue to sin as long as we are in this life, and our sin is still ugly and it offends God. But we have Jesus' perfect righteousness, and our sins can be forgiven and we do not deserve judgment. We must press on to grow in holiness, but we can do that now through God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit.

So that wasn't very quick, but I pray it helps. One thing that preaching the Gospel to yourself every day does is that it helps to keep us humble before God and others, and it teaches us how ugly our sin is, yet God is so loving and kind in spite of it. This also means that we need to be involved in prayer and Bible reading so that we understand the Gospel correctly and be continually reminded of the great grace and kindness of our great God!