The Gospel...

Today we continued our series entitled "The Invitation". The aim of this series is to walk through our mission statement to help people truly understand and hopefully fully embrace what God has called Summit to be all about. Today we wrapped up our discussion and look at the Gospel. The Gospel is the central message of our faith. Without the Goodnews of Christ life, death and resurrection the Apostle Paul says our faith is useless and we should be pitied. But the facts of the Gospel is that Christ did live a sinless life, did die on the cross as the payment for our sins and as the bearer of God's wrath and He did rise again on the third day proving that He was and is the Way, the Truth and the Life. What is discouraging is that we have watered the mighty Gospel of Jesus Christ down to praying a prayer. This morning our hope was to unpack more of the fact that the greatest gift of the Gospel is God and that the power of the Gospel should lead to life change and abundant life. The Gospel should lead to life change. It can not be just a little prayer we prayed to get us out of HELL! I was reading a friend's blog this evening and ironically he had a post about his thoughts on the Gospel. He is a very sharp guy and a pastor on staff at my home church in Miami. I copied a small portion that post on the Gospel below. Enjoy the read. I pray that you are enjoying the fullness of the Gospel every day. God Bless You.

For too many years there was such an emphasis on numerical growth, numbers of baptisms, etc… that a mentality and strategy of evangelism developed that was misguided and even heretical. “Pray the magic prayer” and get eternal life (but can be counted on a tote board) became a form of evangelism that created legions of false “salvations”. Repentance, acknowledgment of sin, a knowledge of grace, the responsibility of Lordship were left out of evangelism and discipleship and tares filled baskets intended for wheat. Genuine salvation is a conversion, not a decision. We’re changed because of the Holy Spirit, not because we “will” it. We come to Christ because He draws us, not because we had someone present a handy-dandy plan replete with a charming personality and a disarming method of explanation. Salvation costs us everything while it cannot be purchased with anything we could possess. Decisionism leads to a false sense of security and salvation and should be rejected.