The Lost Gospel
that seems to be inching its way out of our churches week by week.
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All across America, there are those that walk into church hoping to get a glimmer of the hope that they see promised in the things that they have heard, read, and sometimes assumed about God. They walk past the welcoming crew manning the front doors, shaking their hands and smiling. They mosey on over to the cafe and get a cup of coffee made by the volunteers that morning. Then they finally slowly meander their way to their seat in the sanctuary, patiently waiting to hear a word of hope that will get them through the week—or sometimes just the moment is enough.
When we forget that people are walking into our churches every single week yearning for the hope that is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we forget the reason that we ourselves are gathered together in God’s house. We aren’t there to use God’s words as a roadmap to our life and nothing more. Any other book on planet earth could operate as a moral guide to life. Often they do, whether we realize it or not. We gather together on Sunday mornings to be reminded of how no matter how hard we try to do the right thing, we always fail to do so. That is why we need to be reminded of the gospel every single day.
You see, what you may not have noticed about that new person coming to your church is that perhaps on the way there, someone else that goes to your church cut them off in traffic. Perhaps someone left a nasty Facebook comment, emotionally wounding them. Or perhaps someone just chose to ignore them—we forget that the little things like ignoring others are rooted in our own selfishness, too.
So there our new congregant walks in, already wounded by the world and the church before they even take a step into the building. The service progresses and all they receive is ways to apply God’s word without a glimmer of the true unending hope of the gospel that is so counter to human nature that no matter how hard we try, we can’t possibly understand it in its totality. Yet it is that same troublesome gospel that does its work by reminding us of how much we need God, and how thankful we should be for Jesus dying for us so that we could be forgiven. And tragically, the one aspect of our Christian story that has the ultimate hope in it is often an afterthought.
How different would our world be if we truly were gospel centered? Perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to judge others, knowing that we ourselves are just as deserving of the same bad judgement or worse. Perhaps our world would see the church that we all yearn for: a church rooted in Christ’s love and unwavering atonement of sins. He didn’t just die for some of us, He died for all of us.
Faith to me sometimes feels like chasing after the wind. I can’t see my God or my Savior, yet just like the wind, every day I feel their love every moment I allow them to be present in my life. And even on my worst day, when perhaps my faith is more in myself, I know that I serve a God that said that ‘it is finished’. I don’t have to worry about my mistakes every single day. I don’t have to worry about my own moments of faltering faith. Somehow, in spite of it all, Jesus died for me too. Maybe in spite of all of my own moments of failure, He can look at me and see a man that is desperately clinging to the love he knows He is and offers through the Truth.
The hope of the gospel is far more pungent than the greatest life application that we could ever take away from our Christian sermons or biblical passages. There is definitely an importance of applying God’s law to our lives—don’t wanna just do whatever we want—but if you’re looking at the law of God for a pat on the back, the gospel is waiting in the other room to show you that you aren’t as clever as you thought you were. Good news is that we serve the kindest, most gentle bouncer that has ever guarded a doorway. He only asks that you believe in Him and what He says about who you are: loved, treasured, and adored. He wants you to see your own brokenness so that He can lift you up to who you were always intended to be: an everyday saint.
Common, everyday saints are all around us. They run late to work, bobbing and weaving through traffic. They are those that seem annoyed with the long lines at the grocery store. They are the single parents struggling to reach end’s meet with what little God as given them. They’re the ones that yell at customer service agents over the telephone. Yet God has allowed them into His kingdom because of Jesus, and perhaps we should do the same.