When the church wakes up to the second half of the gospel, the world will wake up to the first half of the gospel.
If delighting in God is the source of our joy, then our becoming devoted to one another is the source of God’s joy.
We so easily turn our deep need to trust and depend on God and others to depending on substitutes, ranging from self-reliance to substances.
Everybody wants to go deeper, but nobody wants to go down. Discontent will lead in one of two directions: distraction or depth.
True growth most often begins with a growing sense of dissonance—of being dissatisfied with the way things are.
Holy discontent is the distance between the truth one knows and the reality one experiences.
“There are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends and honors, but it touches them too closely to disown themselves.”
And that is the story for too many Christians: standing on the porch, ticket to heaven in hand, but never knowing the heaven-filled house of God is open now.
The second half of the gospel opens up a horizon of life we always hoped was possible.
We fail to lay hold of the fullness of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit because we are isolated in broken patterns of sin.
What if the sooner we submit to the Spirit’s wilderness work in our lives, the sooner we enter into the destiny of God’s promise for our lives?
First he reconciles our account. Then he makes us agents—ambassadors is the term—of this reconciliation to the whole world.
