Grace Abounding

I’m almost done reading A Gospel Primer For Christians. The cover is painful to look at, but inside, its pages are filled with a roadmap for Christians to find incredible hope in the Gospel. I make light of the cover, but mostly just to get your attention. For when I first opened it, I never expected to be drawn in so deeply to enjoying the Gospel like it has helped me!

The Gospel has been ever-present in my life since an early age, growing up with my parents who were missionaries and church planters. But I’m still in desperate need of seeing afresh how Christ’s work on the cross conveys astounding present benefits to me as a Christian, benefits I forget, leading to needless confusion and discouragement in my life.

The Gospel isn’t just for those who don’t know God yet. It’s jam-packed with the truths that will motivate me to serve God today and grant my soul deepest satisfied in God himself.

You prefer poetry or narrative? Milton Vincent retells the benefits of the Gospel in each of these ways. He went through a season of life where he exhausted himself in an ongoing struggle with guilt from his sin. Then when he rediscovered the person and work of Jesus Christ as encapsulated in the Gospel, Milton says,

“I could hardly believe my good fortune. I drank in the doctrine of my justification like a thirsty man drinking a tall glass of water in the desert. The way those truths put my soul at rest was indescribable” (p. 95).

The author is honest about wresting as a Christian with pride, doubt, fear, ongoing temptation, and spiritual laziness. His transparency is a window for us to gaze into his life and see how the Gospel can be applied to these same struggles in our own lives.

I’ll be re-reading A Gospel Primer For Christians once a year to find the same liberating and motivating realities that Milton Vincent finds in the Gospel. Why not do the same? It’s available here.

Thanks to John Gardner for giving Christy and me a copy of this book by his brother-in-law.