I. This January, we have the privilege of launching Soma Church, Denver.  23 of our Summit members are uprooting from Raleigh-Durham and moving to Denver to be a part of this plant. They are led by Bryan Barley (bottom right), who we brought on last year as a our church planting resident.

II. Christmas Mission Offering goal was the largest we’ve ever set–$300,000. To date (12/20/2010) you have given $446,000.60. Wow. Every dime of this money leaves our church for church planting and blessing the poor in our communities.

III. Last weekend, I had the chance to be involved with two of our incredible ministries.  One is Agape Corner, a ministry for at-risk kids in downtown Durham.  I try to go over there from time to time to spend time with the kids and answer theological questions (it’s remarkable how many of their questions are exactly the same as the ones college students ask me), and to just get to know the kids a little bit.  They almost all come to our church on the weekends, and it’s my privilege to be able to be involved in their lives.  As I was getting to know them and talking about God’s love for them, I just had the sense in my heart that’ this is right.’  This is where the Summit Church needs to be.

On Sunday night, I had the chance to go with some of our worship team and part of our choir to Butner Federal Prison and work with some of our members who have some ongoing ministry there.  About 50 Summit members there and we had a worship service with about 175 of the prisoners.  It was one of the top worship experiences of my life and, again, I had the sense that ‘this is right’.  This is where we need to be.

We will obviously continue to try to reach  middle-class people, but I want the focus of our church to be on the least of these.

The Holy Spirit has told me that if we will focus on the least of these then He will supply everything we need as a congregation.  We want to pour love into those who can’t pay us back–because that’s how Jesus lived His life and how He pursued His ministry.

I hope that we grow more than we’ve ever grown this next year.  I hope we plant new campuses.  But what I hope most of all is that we will see fruitful ministries develop in those parts of our city that are the most needy–specifically among  the homeless, the orphans, the prisoners, the unwed mothers, and the high school drop-outs/at-risk kids.

Go, Summit!  Dream great things for God, expect great things of God, and then attempt great things for God.  I can’t wait to do this together.

Gracious Jesus, the juxtaposition of images in the nativity scene are almost too much to wrap my tiny heart around. Your mother, Mary, is just beginning to nurse and know you. Even as I write these words I realize what a holy mystery and immeasurable condescension your incarnation was. You, the very God who created all things… the Lord who sustains all things by the power of your word… the King who is making all things new… as a baby you drew life-sustaining nourishment from a young maiden’s breast. I’m stunned by your inconceivable humility—a humility that marked your life from cradle to cross.

Shepherds ran off to spread the word of your birth, while Mary “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” “Hurrying off” like a shepherd to tell others about you has always been easier for me than sitting still and letting you tell me about yourself. It’s always been easier for me to do “productive” things for you, rather than spend undistracted, unrushed time with you. I confess this as sin, Jesus. This simply isn’t okay, for knowing about you is not the same thing as knowing you. An informed mind is not the same thing as an enflamed heart… by any stretch.

To know you is eternal life, and I do want to know you, Jesus… so much better than I already do. I want to treasure you in my heart and ponder who you are. I want to contemplate your joyful life within the Trinity, from all eternity. I want to marinate in everything you’ve already accomplished through your life, death and resurrection… and everything you’re presently doing as the King of kings and Lord of lords… and everything you will be to us in the new heaven and new earth—the Bridegroom of your beloved Bride.

O, blessed circuit board overloading and breaking glory… there’s so much to treasure and so much to ponder. It’s not as though I’m a stranger to treasuring and pondering. I treasure and ponder a lot of things, Jesus—things, however, that lead to a bankrupt spirit…an impoverished heart… and a spent body.

Jesus, this very Advent season, by the power of the gospel, slow all of us down… settle us afresh… center us on yourself, that each of us might say with awe and adoration, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And being with you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps 73:25-26).” So very Amen, we pray, in your peerless and priceless name.

Here is the “introductory” chapter for the book, “GOSPEL: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary.” Does this entice you to read the book? Your comments are, again, appreciated.

Also, I’m not pleased with the subtitle of the book, “Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary.” Can you help me think of another?

1 – The Missing Gospel

For many years in my ministry I found Christianity to be wearisome. That’s a confession you won’t often hear from a pastor, but for many years it was true.

I came to Christ during high school. My conversion, as far as I can tell, was sincere. I was surrendered to do whatever God wanted me to do. But Christianity often felt more like drudgery than delight.

I went to a Christian school that emphasized conformity to a set of rules. We had rules for everything. We weren’t allowed to go to movies—movies would make you worldly. We couldn’t even go see the Christian movies when they came to the theatre, because if people saw us there they might think we were going to worldly movies, and that may make them think it is ok to go see worldly movies, and then they might become worldly and it would be our fault. We didn’t dance, because dancing would make you have impure thoughts. And we didn’t listen to music with a beat in it because that would make you want to dance.

I loosened up some in college, mostly because I married a girl who was a Presbyterian. You know how they are—free in Christ all over the place. Eventually we found a happy medium. When we got married I baptized her, made her quit drinking, and told her it was all predestined to happen. She even got me to start dancing… but after watching me a few times she asked me to quit again.

Throughout most of Christian life I carried around a guilt-complex that I wasn’t a very good Christian. There was always something I knew I should be doing better. Real Christians share Christ with lots of people. So I set goals about how many people I should witness to, and I even established a maximum time limit for how long I would sit with a stranger on an airplane before I would try to share Christ with them. Real Christians love international missions, so I took lots of trips (I went to 25 countries in 10 years!) and gave way lots of money. I even lived in a fundamentalist Muslim country for 2 years. Real Christians loved ministry so much they didn’t care about being married. So I tried to ignore girls during college. That one didn’t last long. Real Christians love their Bibles. So, I got on a 1-year reading program and memorized huge chunks of the Bible. Real Christians love the poor. So I got involved in community ministry and poverty relief.

The list went on and on. It just never seemed to be enough. I never “arrived.” Most discouraging to me was that, despite all my fervent service to God, I didn’t seem to be growing in my love for God. My marriage kept revealing how insanely selfish I was. I was consumed with jealousy over others more successful in ministry than I was. I still succumbed to fleshly temptations. My service was fervent, my passions were cold.

Then I discovered something that changed everything.

The Gospel.

I know that sounds strange for an evangelical pastor who has pastored a growing megachurch to say, but it is true. It’s not that I didn’t understand or believe the Gospel before. I did. I preached it and many came to faith through my preaching. But I didn’t know how to let the Gospel completely re-define my everyday life. The Puritan Jonathan Edwards once described the man who in his head knows that honey is sweet but hasn’t had that sweetness burst alive in his mouth. I was that guy.

“Rediscovering” the Gospel has given me a joy in God I never experienced in all my years of fervent religion. Now I sense, almost daily, a growing love for God that replaces a love for self. The jealously that once consumed my heart is being replaced by a desire to see others succeed and God, not me, glorified. I feel a tenderness and generosity growing in my heart that is displacing calloused selfishness. My craving for the lusts of the flesh is being replaced by a craving for righteousness, and my self-centered dreams are being replaced by God-glorifying ambitions. And I feel a power surging in me that is changing me and driving me out of a J.D.-centered universe to go change my world.

I still have a long way to go, but I am changing. I am, as Paul would say, “making progress in the Gospel.” The Gospel is doing for me what religion never could.

In the last message Jesus gave to His disciples before He died, He told them that the way to fruitfulness was to abide in Him. They wouldn’t produce “abundant fruit” by reading books, practicing self-discipline, memorizing Scripture, or getting in accountability groups. Real fruit comes only from one place: abiding in Jesus.

“Abiding in Jesus” may sound a little spiritual-mystical to you. It always did to me—like you walk around with an ethereal glow in your eye and inexplicably wake up at 4 a.m. strumming Chris Tomlin’ tunes on your harp. But the word abide is much more straightforward than that. It is remaining aware of something, most specifically, Jesus said, “My love.” In other words, to abide in Him is to abide in the conscious presence of the greatness of His love for you. It is by feeling His love—reflecting on it, being saturated with it, standing in awe of it—that we grow in our love for Him and for others.

Think of it like this: spiritual “fruit” is produced in the same way that physical “fruit” is produced. When a man and woman “create” a child (i.e. physical “fruit”), they don’t do that by concentrating on making that child. At the moment of conception, they are most likely not thinking about the myriad biological things happening that create the child. Rather, they are caught up in a moment of loving intimacy (an act of union wherein they “abide” in one another’s love), and the offspring of that is a child.

It is the same with spiritual fruit. Spiritual fruit doesn’t come from focusing on fruit-production, it comes from being swept up in intimate worship of Jesus. The offspring of intimately abiding in Jesus’ love are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control.

That’s what I want to help you do in this book—daily to abide in Jesus.

This book will flow in 2 parts. In part 1, we will look at why and how the Gospel changes us, and why religion is utterly unable to bring about that change. In part 2, I I want to teach you a prayer that will help you saturate yourself in the Gospel every day and retrain your thinking to follow the patterns of the Gospel.

The Gospel Prayer

The prayer has 4 parts. The 1^st two parts of the prayer lead you inward, to renew your mind in how God feels about you and to reflect on what a treasure that is. Grasping and believing those two things is what it means to abide in Jesus, and as you grow in your ability to do that, you will find a love for God and a love for others growing in your heart.

(1) “Father, there is nothing I can do that would make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less.”

(2) “Father, your presence and approval are all I need today for everlasting joy.”

The 3^rd component of the Gospel prayer turns you outward to respond to others with the love and grace that has been shown to you. Jesus indicated this would happen. As you learn my love for you, He said in John 15, you’ll learn to love one another.

(3) “Father, as you have been to me, so I will be to others.”

The 4^th component of the prayer teaches us to ask God to work in the world according to the generosity and power He demonstrated in the Gospel:

(4) “Father, I’ll measure your compassion by the cross and your power by the resurrection and pray accordingly.”

Jesus told His Apostles that if they would abide in His love, they would ask whatever they wanted and He would give it to them. If they could simply grasp God’s love for the world, and His ability to save, and ask according to that knowledge, there would be no limit to what God would do through them.

But I know all this stuff already…

Now, you might look through that prayer and say, “But I already know all this stuff.” Of course you do. But if you are not growing in your passions for God and for His Kingdom, you may not really know them. You may know that the honey is sweet, but that sweetness has not burst alive in your mouth yet.

The Gospel has done its work in you only when you crave God more than you crave everything else in life—more than money, romance, family, health, fame, anything—and when your service to Him is done because there is nothing else you’d rather do that delight Him and see His Kingdom grow in the lives of others.

Christian growth is not usually learning something “new,” but going deeper in what you already know. The purest waters from the spring of life are not accessed by enlarging the circumference of our well, but by digging deeper into it.

The Gospel is amazing because it is simple enough for a child to understand but overwhelming enough that it bewilders the angels. My children have been able to explain the basics of the Gospel from the time they were 4 years old. Jesus, in fact, said that in order to enter the kingdom of God you had to become like a small child. That same simple Gospel, however, still blows the minds of angels. 1 Peter says that the angels “long to look into” the things of the Gospel. The angels have to be some of the smartest theologians in the universe, and they still can’t get enough of it!

You grow in Christ not by cramming your head full of more complex Christian stuff, but by going deeper in the simplicity of the Gospel.

Whatever spiritual dysfunction you have in your life, the cure is the Gospel. Every answer to every question you have about God and yourself is the Gospel. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, said that Christian growth came from “…embracing the love and kindness of God… and daily exercising our faith therein; entertaining no doubt of God’s love and kindness.”[1] Embracing the love of God for you. Abiding in it. Seeing more and more of your life through it.

The Gospel Project

Let me lay a very heavy burden before you. I think evangelicalism, as a whole, desperately needs a recovery of the Gospel. Even in conservative denominations like my own (the Southern Baptist Convention), who have built their identity on standing for the importance of the Gospel, the Gospel has been displaced as the primary means of Christian growth.

I don’t mean we are not preaching the Gospel or that we have corrupted it, doctrinally speaking. Being Gospel-centered does not mean that each week we tack it onto the end of our sermons or that we can articulate with precision the pages of a systematic theology manual. Making the Gospel central in our lives means that our primary goal is to adore and show off the beauties of God displayed in the Gospel, knowing that as people see God for who He is, their hearts will fall in love with Him and overflow with love for others.

Love for God and others is the heart of all the commandments. Jesus said that if we did that, we would naturally keep all the other commandments? But how can we learn to love? You can’t be commanded to love; true love only grows when you delight in and cherish something. Where does the heart learn to delight in and cherish God? Only in knowing God’s prior love given to it as a gift (Matthew 22:37-40; 1 John 4:19)For many evangelicals, the Gospel has functioned as the entry rite into Christianity; a prayer we prayed to begin our relationship to God; the diving board off of which we jumped into the pool of Christianity.

What I want to show you is that the Gospel is not just the diving board off of which we jump into the pool of Christianity, it is the pool itself. It is not only the way we begin in Christ, it’s also the way we grow in Christ. As Tim Keller says, the Gospel is not just the ABC’s of Christianity, it is the A-Z; it is not the first step in a stairway of truths, it is more like the hub of a wheel of truth.[2]

In seminary one of my professors used to say that “Evangelism was one beggar showing another beggar where he found bread.” The implication was that we ate the Gospel bread once, were satisfied, and then spent the rest of our lives telling people how satisfying it was. I think it would be better to say that evangelism is one beggar taking another beggar to the place he eats bread daily and showing him how to find ever-present satisfaction for his starving soul.

Let me say this again as clearly as I can: Centering yourself on the Gospel does not mean being passionate about the spread of the Gospel, giving a lot of money to missionary work, or inviting people to be saved at the end of every sermon. Centering yourself on the Gospel means that everything you do flows spontaneously out of an overwhelmed sense of awe and delight in who God is and gratitude for what He has done for you in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Helping you develop those passions the burden of this book. I want to help you center your life on the Gospel.

A Gospel Revolution

The neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth grew up in a very liberal German theological tradition that denied the atoning work of Jesus on the cross and His physical resurrection. Barth re-discovered the Gospel while teaching through the book of Romans.

He described his experience like falling down the long shaft of a church belltower and grabbing, in desperation, the rope attached to the church bell. Clinging to the rope for dear life, he rang out a sound which called many in the church back to faith.

I hope that something like that is the experience of many of you reading this book. I suspect that many of you come from the same kind of evangelical tradition I came out of. You are plagued by the thought that you have never done enough. Christianity, at times, seems like a burden to you. I hope that you will re-discover the Gospel in a way that transforms you, your family, and your church.

This is what has happened for me and the church I lead, the Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, NC. When I came to the Summit Church in 2002 I preached the Bible. People came to faith in Christ. But it was almost 4 years later when I discovered what it meant to center my life on the Gospel. I listen to those sermons from the 1^st 4 years and realize they are filled more with moralisms about how to live than they are adoration of Jesus Christ. In a lot of the illustrations I point people more to an example to emulate (often me) than I do a Savior to hope in.

Here’s something scary: I think most Muslims could have preached my sermons from those 1^st 4 years and simply substituted “Mohammad says” for “Paul says” or “Jesus says.” How I tried to motivate people to obey is not fundamentally different than how works-based religions motivate people to obey. Yes, I took people through a “salvation rite,” but at the end of the day I told you to obey so that your life would be blessed and you could avoid God’s discipline. Obeying God was a means to an end. I didn’t urge obedience as a grateful response to God’s grace, or urge people to seek God because He was beautiful in Himself (I’ve told our congregation I’d like to preach a series at our church called “Encore” in which I go and re-preach all those passages, topics and book in a Gospel-centered way.)

In the last 4 years we have “re-discovered” the Gospel as a congregation. The change has been profound. We are more fruitful than ever. We have grown, numerically, at a greater rate than we did before. More importantly, I see people in our congregation who have for the 1^st time in years become worshippers of God.

The Father seeks those who worship Him in Spirit and truth, i.e. those who seek Him because they delight in Him. I am seeing Him find some of those in our congregation, and it has only come through the consistent preaching of the glory and beauty of Christ in the simplicity of the Gospel.

I want you, and your family, and your church, to have that kind of revolution, too. The humbling thing for me is that I can’t really teach any of this to you. These things are spiritually revealed and spiritually discerned. They require the gift of heavenly eyes. I couldn’t even teach it to myself when it was right in front of my face, so what would make me think I could illuminate your heart?

And what makes you think you can develop a passion for God by reading a book? Why not stop right now and plead with God to open the eyes of your heart? You might use the words of Paul in his prayer for the Ephesians,

“I pray… that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened… and I pray that you… may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 1:17–18; 3:18–20)

[2] The phrasing of this I owe to Tim Keller. As I said in the Introduction, it would be hard for me to overestimate the impact Dr. Keller, David Powlison, Ed Welch and others have had on my thinking. They have sent me through a Gospel revolution I have never recovered from, and probably never will. I have so saturated myself in their thoughts that it is hard for me sometimes to recognize where their thoughts stop and mine start. I owe a heavy debt of gratitude, and a lot of credit, for the ideas in this book.

I want to see if you think this chapter from part 1 is helpful in a discussion on why the Gospel changes us, and, if so what I can do to improve it. In this book I have been making the case that the Gospel does not tell us to (borrowing the words of Tim Keller here) “go and change,” but “changes us on the spot” by giving us new loves and desires. Christianity is less about telling us what to go and do for God than it is making us stand in awe of what God has done for us. This chapter is called “The Gospel and the Commands of Scripture.” I know this makes for a long blog, but your comments and feedback would be very much appreciated!

The Gospel and the Commands of Scripture

Now comes time for a question I hear a lot, and one you may have had for several chapters now.

If it is true that the Gospel changes us not by telling us to “go and change,” but instead by “changing us on the spot,” what are the purposes of biblical “commandments”? Doesn’t the whole concept of commandments imply that we need to be told to do something that we otherwise would not do? After all, if the right behavior came naturally, why would we need to be commanded to do it? And if God has really changed us with the Gospel, why do we still need to be commanded to do anything? And, if so, why does the New Testament have a plethora of commands… or are they not really commands?

This question has surfaced a number of times as our church (and I) have struggled to understand what it means to be Gospel-centered. Once after a series of sermons in which I laid out a vision for where we as a church were going and what I needed each member to be doing to get there (things like serving, reaching out to their neighbors, being involved in the lives of hurting people in our community, tithing, etc), I received a scathing letter from a congregation member telling me that throughout that series I had abandoned the Gospel and fallen back into legalistic manipulation to coerce people into doing what I wanted them to do! If I just preached the Gospel, they said, people would naturally do what they were supposed to do and I wouldn’t have to urge them to do anything.

Is that true? Are all commandments really anti-Gospel legalism? Or, put another way, is there a legitimate role for commandments, rituals, and spiritual disciplines in the Christian life?

The idea that commandments have no place among Gospel-centered Christians is wrong for at least two reasons.

First, our fallen hearts are not only cold toward God, they are ignorant of God. The commandments instruct us about God and His ways.

In Romans 1 the Apostle Paul explains that the problem of the fallen human heart is twofold: (1) We are ignorant: Our sin has made us ignorant of God and His ways; and (2) We are unwilling: we now hate the things that we do know about God.

The commandments primarily help us with the 1^st problem, by revealing to us God and His will. To say we don’t need commandments is to assume that we already know everything there is to know about God and His will, and our only problem is that we don’t want do those things. Romans, however, paints a different picture. We need both instruction to overcome our ignorance (we need to know what is right) and the power of new life to overcome our spiritual death (the fact that we love the wrong). The commandments give us the former; the Gospel gives us the latter.

The laws of God are like railroad tracks, pointing us in the direction to go—and trains need tracks, since without them they would veer into all kinds of ditches—but laws in themselves, while pointing us in the right direction, are unable to give us the power to move along the tracks. Only the Gospel can do that. The commands confront ignorance and point us in the right way; the Gospel gives the power of new life to actually go that direction.

Second, we learn to love certain things by doing them. Obedience to commandments and spiritual disciplines establish patterns in our lives that allow the Gospel to work on our hearts.

Our loves are often developed by our experiences and our habits. Sometimes we love something the first time we see it; other times we grow to love it as we experience it. Thus, our disciplines and our habits, in addition to hearing the Gospel be preached, can form and develop our desires.

James K.A. Smith wrote a book recently called Desiring the Kingdom. He makes the case that Christian discipleship is growing in our love for the Kingdom of God, and then that we learn to love that kingdom by participating in habits and practices. If our daily routines are tuned to indulge the lusts of the flesh, those are what we will grow to love. If, however, our habits put us face to face with the beauties of the Gospel, we will grow to love that instead.

Or let me use a different example. Chip and Dan Heath recently released a leadership book called Switch in which they explain how effective leaders implement change in organizations. They make the case that we can promote change more by changing what people experience than we can by convincing them of the need for change. They compare it to a man riding an elephant who is guiding the elephant with reins. The rider might think he’s directing the animal, but if the animal itself ever decided to go a new direction, the rider would be helpless to actually stop it. In their analogy, the elephant is like our desires, the rider is like our mind. There are two ways to make the rider go a certain direction. You can tell him to go that direction, and hope he can persuade the animal. Or, you can persuade the animal, and the rider will have to follow.

Appetites grow as you use them. Appetites do not shrink when they are satisfied, they grow. For example, have you ever gone out to eat at Outback, ordered an appetizer, a salad, a 14oz steak, a potato and a dessert… and when it’s all said and done, you say, “I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.” Four hrs. later, however, you are back at the pantry, scrounging for a Pop-Tart. And the next time you go to Outback, you eat even more. This is making me hungry… I’ll be back in an hour. OK. Appetites grow as you use them. This is true for almost all of our desires. People who struggle with pornography will often say that the more they fed their appetite for illicit sex, the stronger and darker the appetite became.

Spiritual appetites work the same way. Thus, disciplining ourselves to do what we don’t always want to do, together with meditating on the Gospel, is how we learn to love the things we should love.

Disciplines are like the wire that connects us to the power of the Gospel. They have no power in themselves, but they give the power the opportunity to flow into us.

I think of how I do this with my kids. If one of my kids has a lying problem, I don’t say, “Well, the Gospel only changes you from within, and I don’t want to turn you into a Pharisee who only obeys because of external compulsion… thus, you should only tell the truth when you feel like it. Lie away.” No… I insist they tell the truth, and even spank them when they don’t, knowing that as they speak truth, they will, together with the power of the Gospel, learn to love truth more than lies. As they experience the beauty of truth, justice, and mercy, and as I remind them of the glory of God behind these virtues, they learn to love those things.

The same thing is true of loving, for example, God’s word. You get up in the morning and you don’t “feel” like reading the Bible. You feel like getting on with your day. Then, at night, you don’t “feel” like spending time in God’s word, you feel like watching TV. So what do you do? Is “making yourself” read the Bible legalism? No. What you are doing is training your heart through habits, giving it a chance to develop a love for God’s word.

If you choose, instead, to watch TV, your appetite for laziness and the lusts of the flesh are likely to grow. Thus, the next day you will desire more TV and less of God. And on and on it goes in a downward cycle. As you feed the flesh, its appetites grow; as you feed the Spirit, its appetites grow.

What, then, is legalism?

Legalism is either when you a) think that doing something makes God love and approve of you more, or b) you put so much emphasis on developing the outward behavior that you forget inward change really comes through the power of the Gospel.

Here’s what legalism looks like as it relates to your daily Bible reading. It used to be that when I missed reading the Bible in the morning, I felt disconnected from God—like He wasn’t happy with me, would probably find small ways to punish me throughout the day, and wouldn’t eagerly hear my prayers. That is legalism. God doesn’t love or approve of me any more based on how well or how often I do my quiet time. He has made Himself as close as possible to me in Christ, and, having received that, I can’t add to or take away from it.

Doing a quiet time won’t make me closer to God, but it will provide the opportunity to reflect on the fact that God has made Himself close to me. Doing a quiet time each morning provides me the opportunity to reflect on the Gospel. Or, to borrow a phrase from Paul Miller, spiritual disciplines don’t create intimacy with God, they make room for it.[1]

Sinful choices and habits have consequences, both for others and for ourselves. For example, if I am walking through the mall, see a beautiful girl, and am tempted to fantasize about an adulterous relationship, I don’t say to myself in that moment, “Well, choosing not to do something even when I want to do it is mechanical change, so I might as well follow my heart on this one.” Even though my flesh and my heart in that moment may want to pursue immorality, I also know that if I pursue the wicked desire of my heart that I will destroy my relationship with my wife and family, something I know I will grow to regret. I also know that feeding immoral desire will only make it grow. So, instead of indulging the flesh, I say “no” to it and focus on purity… knowing that if I feed my heart’s desire for purity, that desire will grow. The goal is that when I am tempted by a girl’s beauty at the mall, immediately my desire for purity, my family, and God make the entertaining of any marital unfaithfulness loathsome to me. That emotion is created by meditating on the beauty of the Gospel and the practice of purity. The Apostle Paul said it this way, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. Let us not grow weary, then, in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” (Gal 6:7-9).

Or, let’s apply this to generosity. Just about anyone who is generous will tell you, the heart often learns to love generosity through being generous. Often I don’t feel like being generous. I’ll get an extra $1000 and will know some need I should give it to, but in that instance I “feel” more like buying a flat screen than helping with that need. But as I practice the discipline of giving, I learn to love it.

Is that the opposite of Gospel-centered change? I hope not. After all, Jesus Himself said, “Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be” (Matthew 6:21). See what came first in that sequence? You put your treasure somewhere, and your heart follows. “But isn’t Gospel-centered generosity being so overwhelmed to the lavish grace of Christ that you delight in being generous?” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Well, yeah. But actually being generous puts you in touch with the heart of God and as you experience it (and Him) you learn to love Him.

Don’t let this theory of Gospel-centeredness cause you to manipulate and twist other plain principles in Scripture. Don’t try to be more Gospel-centered than Jesus. That’s a general rule of thumb you should live by.

One of the most effective personal evangelists I know, Bob Roberts, says that the most effective way to change a skeptic’s mind is usually not through argument, but through his hands. If you have an atheist, Bob says, who is not open to God at all, invite them to serve the poor with you. As they experience the joy of giving to someone else, their heart becomes softened to God, because God is love. As they experience sacrificial love, they are experiencing a dimension of God. That makes their hearts more receptive to God, which makes their minds more receptive to arguments for God. Handsàheartàheads. What they love, and even what they think, comes from what they were experiencing and doing.

Believe the Gospel; obey the commands

The Gospel is the only place where the power of new life—the power to develop a love for God and for others—resides. Nothing in this chapter should contradict that. Part of how we develop that love for God is by disciplining ourselves to obey the commands and focus on the Gospel, so that the Gospel has a chance to recreate our hearts in its image.

A great example of this in action is the spiritual discipline of fasting. When you fast, you are actually depriving your body of a legitimate craving so that you can train yourself that satisfying your soul in God is more satisfying than satisfying your body with food.

Fasting, on the surface, looks quite legalistic. How does depriving your body of food produce true spiritual fruit? It doesn’t, by itself. Going without food certainly doesn’t make you more pleasing to God. But if you use the absence of food to train your soul to feast on the glories of the Gospel, fasting becomes a pipe through which the power of the Gospel can flow. That’s apparently what Jesus did when He fasted. He starved His body from food so He could really understand that “Man does not live (read: thrive, come alive) by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father.[2]

In other words, fasting creates the opportunity to exercise more effective faith in the Gospel.

Understand the Gospel, then practice the disciplines

Spiritual disciplines only turn into legalism if you don’t get the Gospel. If you are thoroughly saturated in the Gospel, however, you will practice spiritual disciplines just fine. Unfortunately, most Christians gravitate toward spiritual disciplines before they understand the Gospel, and the result is a discouraging, legalistic, pride-inducing works-righteousness. People rotate through cycles of pride and despair depending on how well they’ve kept the commands and maintained the disciplines that week.

When you understand the Gospel, however, and keep it always before yourself, you can practice the disciplines with vigor in a spiritually enriching way. You can even set goals.

A very sincere believer explained to me that Christian growth took the shape of a wheel. Spiritual disciplines are like the spokes of that wheel. He said, “I rate myself on a scale of 1 to 10 how well I’m doing at the basic Christian functions—things like prayer, knowledge of God, faithfulness in Bible reading and church, generosity, witness, community, and etc.” Then, I use those numbers to put corresponding lengths of spokes around my hub. That demonstrates why my life is out of whack and spiritually lopsided, and so I resolve to grow in whatever area I am the shortest.”

Unfortunately, my well-meaning friend did not ground this thinking in the Gospel. He measured his closeness to God and his spiritual stature by how well he was doing. How he measured-up formed his spiritual identity became a source of pride or discouragement.

Had he understood the Gospel however, this could have been a useful tool. If you know that how well you are doing in an area doesn’t affect your closeness to God, and you know that apart from the Gospel all the spiritual discipline in the world can’t produce on ounce of life in your heart, then you can practice the spiritual disciplines as God intends: as gateways to the Gospel, and not substitutes for the Gospel. You can set goals—for example, to spend at least 15 minutes a day I nthe Word and 15 minutes in prayer, for 21 days; to fast once a month; to share Christ weekly—and as you use those disciplined times to focus on the glory of the Gospel, you will learn to love it. As you love it, you’ll spend more time doing those things, naturally. You’ll be in a self-feeding, self-reproducing cycle of life.

How much you grow will probably amaze you. It just might blow your mind. You will be following the growth strategy of the New Testament. You will be abiding in Jesus just as He instructed, and you will bear much fruit.

[2] Matthew 4:4. An excellent treatment of fasting and the whole concept of spiritual discipline is John Piper’s Hunger for God.

Caveat: We don’t want to be into numbers, except as they represent individual people who have found Jesus. God punished David for lifting up his pride by counting the size of his army (this is a bad use of numbers); the angels of heaven know exactly how many sheep Jesus has and burst into applause when even 1 more comes to faith (this is a good use of numbers).

In case you missed our Vision Night, here is some of what we celebrated and praised God for:

• Our average attendance increased 25% from 2009 to 2010… We’ve been, this fall, having somewhere just under 5000 each weekend on our campuses. To put that in perspective, this past year we were acknowledged by Outreach Magazine as being the 16th fastest growing church in the nation (for 2009), and in 2010 we grew by even more than we did in 2009.
• 2,546 first time guests attended the Summit in 2010.
• Right at 500 individuals were baptized this year, including over 100 middle school, high school, or college students.
• 353 new covenant members joined us in 2010. We make that hard, because we want membership to mean something. These are usually people who get it and are jumping onboard to small groups and ministries.
• Our number of small groups grew from 120 last year to 210 this year. That needs to double again this next year.
• Nearly 100 church planters are currently serving across the globe in at least 17 different countries. They are concentrated in 6 Summit church planting teams overseas: 2 in Central Asia, 1 in South Asia, 1 in North Africa, 1 in South Africa, and 1 in Southeast Asia, plus a smattering of people scattered in other, independent projects. We’re not sure how to count “new churches” on the field yet. In Southeast Asia, they have seen the (1st ever!) replicating house church movement among Muslim background believers. 34 Muslims have come to faith in Christ there in the past few weeks. It is happening.
• In addition to that, 96 Summit members are preparing to go somewhere in church planting in the next year, including over 40 college graduates who have made a two-year commitment to go and serve on a stateside or overseas mission team.
• With Soma Church launching in Denver in January, 2011, we have 8 North American church plants. Soma is taking with it 22 SummitRDU members, who are uprooting their lives, moving to Denver, and getting jobs there to join this plant. One of our other church plants, the Gallery Church in NYC, has already planted 2 more churches and has a goal of planting 100 in 10 years.
• 268 Summit members participated on 14 different short term mission trips in 2010. We need to triple that number.
• We met and surpassed last year’s budget. Your additional generosity allowed us to give a large gift to a church-based orphan care ministry in Southeast Asia that works with local churches to serve over 600 orphans living in the most un-evangelized island in the world.
• Crossway Church in Apex has merged with us, and is in the process of re-launching as a new Summit Campus in the following months.
• Our Summit en Espanol campus is averaging 20 more people per weekend this fall compared to the fall of 2009.
• Summit Students launched North Durham Elevate for middle and high school students. Our kids ministry added a very successful “family worship night” and replicated several of their ministries at new campuses.
• The North Raleigh Campus launched this fall and is now averaging over 500 people per week! This January the Cole Mill Campus re-launches as the North Durham campus, with a fresh vision to reach the North Triangle area. Also in January we are opening another medium-size venue at the Brier Creek campus, and are looking to open another campus in Apex, Chapel Hill, or Hillsborough. Coming soon to a theater near you. Unless someone donates us a building.
• Over 6,500 hours of community service were logged by over 1,500 people during ServeRDU.
• We are going to meet and blow out of the water our Christmas Mission Offering goal of $300,000 for 2010. That will put us right near $1 million that we gave away to missions and poverty relief in 2010, not including mission trips.

As one of our worship pastors, Matt Papa, said as we left Tuesday night, “Jesus did many mighty works on earth… but one phrase he often used as he did them was, ‘Be it unto you according to your faith.’ Summit, may we believe God that even greater things are still to come in RDU.”

“Many people assume that 10 percent of all of God’s blessings—money, time and even talents—is like a God-tax, with everything else available to squander on personal consumption. Jesus is no enemy of the pleasures of life, but He never gives us blanket permission to use God’s resources frivolously. All He gives us is for one primary purpose—building the eternal kingdom. Whenever we prove faithful in building that kingdom, we will be given ample resources, increasing with our measure of generosity. Whenever we prove unfaithful we’ll find ourselves empty—perhaps not now, but eventually.”

For many years I heard that passage and interpreted Jesus’ words in terms of a percentage… “Only the upper 10% will make it, and the other 90% are going to get cut.” So, I’d go out and try harder, trying to ensure that I’d be in that upper 10%… I’m going to give more, be more moral, be more radical, be more regular in my quiet time… then God won’t ever say that to me.”

Many of you after this weekend’s message on the “fake” repentance on Saul–coming to God because you know He’s necessary to make life work, to get you out of a jam, or because you are scared of hell–confessed to me that you were afraid that you might be in that group. How do you know that you know God? Are you doing “enough” to be counted as a disciple of Christ?

Jesus did not say in that passage, “You didn’t do enough stuff for Me.” He said, “You never knew Me.”

In other words, you never knew Who I was or what I was about. You never knew how I felt about you and rested in that, cherished it, and delighted in it.

Knowing God is not about going out and doing a bunch more stuff for God. The foundation of Christianity is knowing what He’s done for you and how He feels about. From there, obedience comes naturally. Get your eyes off of yourself and onto Him. That’s what it means to know Him.

Here is the question every person in church needs to consider: Have you ever received the warmth of God’s love for you personally? Have you ever heard His voice in your soul saying, “You. You are my child. I died for you. I have accepted you.” And has that resulted in a life of obedience, sacrifice, and joy? Those are the signs that you’ve really met Him. If those things are not true of you, the remedy is not to start doing them. The remedy is to know Him. And knowing Him is faith and what He’s done and humble adoration of Who He is.

To try and say it succinctly… Again, Christianity does not begin with doing stuff for Jesus, but knowing Jesus, and knowing how He feels about you and what He’s done for you.

When you understand that, and believe it, and cherish it, you’ll start to obey, naturally. Do you know Him?