The Gospel.

"Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."-Luke 24:46-49

That Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. And that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations.

The simple truth. I think we make the Gospel complicated.

You see, God isn't asking for perfect people to come to Himself so that He can accept them as His own. He is calling out for the poor and powerless, the weak and needy, the no good, the losers, the hopeless, the fearful, and the wandering. He wants us just as we are. And through His power, He makes us whole.

Don't water-down the Gospel. Don't try to make it fit into your own ideas. You can't conform it to your life. It doesn't work like that. If you try to conform the Gospel to your life, it doesn't have any affect.

THE GOSPEL IS THE LIVING WORD. IT BRINGS LIFE AND PEACE AND JOY.

We try to fit it into a box to make ourselves feel better. But we can't. We aren't supposed to.

When we lay everything before God. I mean everything. Our hopes and our dreams. Our failures and our weaknesses. He breathes His life into us. The creator of the universe breathes His life into us. THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE. Before Him nothing on the earth or under the earth can possibly stand with pride. "Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."-Philippians 2:9-11

It is in the humbling, in the dying to our flesh. It is there that we find life. Glorious life! The life that comes from the One true God! Jesus Christ! He who suffered and rose again on the third day that we may have forgiveness of sins.

We must work everyday. Because a war was never won in a day. So we press on. Further up and further in.