Maybe He who made us and formed us and who loved us and gave Himself for us, and who upholds the universe with the Word of His Power… maybe He has what even I need.

What did they recognize about Jesus? The fact that all who were sick had only to touch the fringe of His garment to be made well.

Our sins are removed “as far as the east is from the west.”

Like a pebble hurled into the ocean, so the devastating enormity of our sin disappeared into the grace of God when Christ Jesus gave His life for us.

Forgiveness is beautiful, worth it, and life-changing. It’s worth the steps, the time, the work.

Jesus was kind because He remembered God’s promises. He remembered who He was. He remembered where He was going.

Jesus will not deliver what we want when we want it and how we like it. Rather, He will be for us what He knows we need when He knows we need it and how will be best.

God loves us perfectly. He knows us completely. God knows everything and… loves us. 

The Spirit reminds us in 1Corinthians 15:1-2 that what we need for all those situations is contained within the truths of the Gospel.

The Spirit does something miraculous when we are reminded of the Gospel—the Spirit makes it new. Something old and known becomes like a new discovery. This is a grace.

If the Gospel is true, then what we do with our bodies, minds, relationships, marriages, churches, worship, our everything, matters.

We want to keep the Gospel at hand. It’s part of our “every day carry.” It’s on our belt, in our purse or pockets, in the center console, at our bedside, on the counter.

It’s near to us and we are never far from it.

We may be saved already—once-for-all!—but we now need Jesus, Savior and Shepherd, to bring His saving grace into every part of our lives.

Scripture calls us to stand and walk, wait and work, push forward and stay rooted. These are not in tension. They are the What and the How of the Christian life.

To “receive” the Gospel is to hear it and to believe it. It’s to put our faith in this message, to entrust our lives to it, to open our hearts to it, to apply it to ourselves.

The Gospel interrupts our sense that we’re all alone, left to our own plans and our own abilities, unregarded and unloved.

We are being saved by the Gospel as we stand in it and hold it fast, as we receive it when we are reminded of it when it is preached to us.

We know joy starts with our God, but it has to make contact with our hearts for it to become our joy.

Our joy is with Him. That’s where it is. It’s not anywhere else. To have it, to get it, we must first seek it where it can be found.

There’s no joy for us apart from God, or without God. We can’t expect our hearts to rejoice when we’re living without thought of God or regard for Him.