We’re coming to the end of our study of Jonah at my church. Our study focuses a lot on the gospel in Jonah (really, it is a book that is more than a story about a fish!). In our culture, it often seems that the gospel ends with salvation. Once a person becomes a Christ follower, we think the gospel’s use is done. Scripture teaches otherwise and we’ve been exploring the idea of “preaching the gospel” to ourselves everyday. The book we’ve been reading is Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels by Tullian Tchividjian. He says, “The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day…Christians need the gospel because our hearts are always prone to wander; we’re always tempted to run from God. It takes the power of the gospel to direct us back to our first love.”

What does this have to do with being a mom? I have to remember the grace of the gospel in my life in my daily interactions with my kids. The very things they do that may upset me are the very things God has forgiven me for. How often do I say “How many times do I have to tell you to…? The Spirit reminds me how many times I have done the same to God. When I live out the gospel, I want them to see Jesus and what he did for them. I want them to run to the cross each time they stumble. Because Christianity often mistakenly teaches that once you’re a Christian you then need to work hard to behave like one, we frequently remind them that they cannot do anything that is good apart from the help of the Holy Spirit. (Is. 64:6) After they have sinned, we pray with and for them that the Holy Spirit would help them to change and grow to be more like Christ.

I need to hear that too! I recently confessed a sin in my heart to my accountability group. When the Holy Spirit reveals sin to me, I want to try and correct it right away. How can I change or make things better? The guilt begins to mount and before you know it, I’ve forgotten what Christ did for me. Jerry Bridges describes in The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness what it means to live out the gospel everyday:

“It is not our contrition or sorrow for our sin, it is not our repentance, it is not even the passing of a certain number of hours during which we feel we are on some kind of probation that cleanses us. It is the blood of Christ, shed once for all on Calvary two thousand years ago but appropriated daily or even many times a day, that cleanses our consciences and gives us a renewed sense of peace with God…To preach the gospel to yourself, then means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.”

Father, I thank you for your plan of redemption that made a way for your children to come before you. Help me each day to “face up to my own sinfulness and flee to Jesus through faith.” And help me to live a life that points my children away from self and works but to the cross.