Quotes from Books I Am Reading

Currently, I am reading two books.  The first is Gospel Centered Kids Ministry by Brian Dembowczyk and Gospel Fluency by Jeff Vanderstelt.  Here are some quotes from this week's reading:

The battle of sin is won and lost in the heart.

The beauty of the gospel is that it would not be based off of human effort; rather, it would rest entirely on what God would do on man's behalf.

The gospel is not good advice about how to live; it is good news about what God has done.

Our target is a transformed heart, not changed behavior. A transformed heart will always result in changed behavior that honors God, but changed behavior will not always result in a transformed heart that yields to God.

We cannot move straight to application through bypassing the gospel. We need to filter everything we teach through the gospel.

But we always follow the "what" of God's commands with the "why." And that "why" is always anchored to the gospel in looking at who Jesus is and what He has done. We want our kids to love Jesus so deeply that they desire to obey God's commands as a byproduct of that love. They obey out of gratitude, not obligation. They obey with joy, not with resentment. They obey out of an overflowing appreciation of the gospel.

But notice how God tells them they'll be able to grow--it will be God working in them.  This is the stunner of the gospel.

Gospel-fluent people think, feel, and perceive everything in light of what has been accomplished in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

it was through the gospel that they were born again. It is by the gospel that they find themselves growing up into Christ. And they are convinced that the gospel will keep them to the end and perfect them into the true image of Christ.

Gospel fluency begins in you, gets worked out within community, and is expressed to a world that needs to hear about Jesus.

The questions "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" are not meant to be answered outside of what God says and what God does.

All of creation is affected as humanity's sin wreaks havoc on our world.

Redemption became the running theme of the story as God continued to call his people to trust him by reminding them of what he had done for them and to obey him in light of their faith in him.

Jesus came as the true and better Adam, the true and better Abraham, and the true and better Israel.

We, as his people, become a foretaste of the future, pointing forward to a better day by giving people a taste of it now...Through our lives, Jesus is saying, "Taste and see that the Lord is good!"

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