Blog

One of our Grace church planters asked for thoughts on how to gauge the spiritual health of his flock (and urged me to share my response here). While a little longer than a normal post . . . here it is:

Imagine the scene of Eden—not born of human hands but planted by the Lord Himself. Every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food sprang not from the sweat of Adam’s brow, but from the fertile goodness of God’s own hand. The rivers flowed, the fruit ripened, the earth smiled with abundance—all before man lifted a finger.

No sentence ever spoken has carried such thunderous power in so few words: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” This is the gospel boiled down to its blazing essence. Not “strive and be saved,” not “impress and be saved,” not “clean yourself and be saved,” but believe.

Our church has been focused this year on the idea of seeing as God sees – emphasizing an eternal perspective. It is a focus that calls us to surrender our relentless worship of the temporal – a call my heart, in part, still resists. I write today to those parts of my own heart...

Psalm 63 is, for me, a spiritual check-up passage. As you read David’s expressions of thirst and longing for the relational presence of God, let the Holy Spirit sift your affections while asking yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being a robust echoing of David’s feelings), where are my heart’s affections? And then let David’s example draw you up the scale.