The Gospel

What is the gospel? Is it just words? Is it for everybody or just Christians? If it's so powerful, then why don't we see it having an impact as it did in the book of Acts?
World famous evangelist Reinhard Bonnke once quipped, "If we want to get the results the apostle got, we must preach what the apostles preached, and how they preached it." I do believe this is the secret ingredient to greater impact in our territory, we must wholeheartedly embrace the finished work of Jesus for ourselves and then proclaim that good news through our lives, both through our words and actions.

The power of the gospel gets systematically diminished when we begin to add to it our human self efforts and religious traditions.  We have made the gospel something that's its not, a morality reformation, a call to social action, or religious traditions within a worship service. But the gospel is only powerful when it is proclaimed in it's purest form: the undiluted, no additives version of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

So how do you know if you have the right gospel? Well you know by the fruit. What fruit? Like living right and generally being nice? Well I suppose that could be a fruit. But the prevailing fruit of receiving the true gospel is grateful astonishment. Something the Bible calls faith. The best way to know if the true gospel is being preached, is to see people spontaneously and joyously responding with grateful trust! Everything else follows that initial response in a person. A work that neither you nor the person is responsible for doing, but rather solely the job of the Holy Spirit.

The teaching series on Grace at LifePoint is laying a powerful foundation  to equip everyone with the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Where everyone fixes their gaze upon Jesus, in awe of what He has accomplished. As the veil of the old covenant law is removed from our hearts, we will be able to embrace more fully the truth of Jesus Christ, and find ourselves liberated in ways we could have never imagined!

When we personally experience the circumcision of our ears by the new covenant, we will only be able to hear God through that grace filter. Then and only then, will we be prepared to proclaim the gospel the apostles preached, in the way they preached it!

Bryan Finley

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