Gospel Fluency

Zachary Mashburn is the youth pastor at Christ Redeemer Church in Cottage Grove, MN.

Transcript

My favorite part of my job, being a youth pastor, is just getting to share the gospel message continuously, over and over, time and time again.

It does something for me and I hope and I pray that it does something for my junior high students at some point, and I actually get to see the work going on in their life as well. So seeing what the Holy Spirit is doing there. And so tonight I just get to talk about the Gospel in a really unique way with this topic of gospel fluency.

But before I jump right in, let me just pray real quick once again for our time.

Dear Lord, I just thank you for the opportunity to be here. I turn to you now in prayer, just knowing that I can't offer anything wise or hope for anything good to share on my own. So, Holy Spirit, I just ask that you would allow me to do so tonight through your written word and through this idea that is playing off of the gospel and help us to just understand what it looks like to apply the gospel a little bit deeper in our lives tonight as a result. I thank you for your goodness. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.

Well, if you're like me, you probably have watched a YouTube video on something that you've never done before. And thought to yourself quickly afterwards: Well, that looks easy. I can do that. I can totally do that. And if you're also like me, you may have watched eight videos on that thing before you set your mind to go out and do it.

But then finally comes the time where you set out to do that DIY project or that new hobby, and then the reality of that thing is much more complex than what you saw on those videos. I thought this about those cool vans that you see driving around where people like turn them into like a little house or like a camper van. I'm like, man, that would be sick. Like, I’d love just driving those through like national parks and it would just be really cool. I'm always like, I could do that. I could totally do that. But as Jackson already pointed out, we can't really even hang blinds together. So, you know, we've got a long, long way to go.

And so although I've seen many people, even on these videos come to that similar conclusion, even in the video itself just being like, okay, this is a little bit more than I bargained for in this project. And I think the reason we do this is because we have certain ideals and expectations in place. When we look at things from afar, right?

When we're just observers and not participators, we can be the most knowledgeable camper van video watcher in the room, but that is very different from experiencing that thing yourself, working in the heat, running into issues, learning from mistakes and trying your best to persevere through those things and actually get the goal done. And I think that the Christian life can often be like this at times.

We might read our scriptures, we might read all the new Crossway and Banner of Truth books that come out, but we lack a certain skill set, I think, to communicate this information to others without it feeling like a lecture, or just communicating it at all. Maybe we just keep it to ourselves.

Sometimes our ideals and expectations about situations in the Christian life can just seem to have a disconnect. And I believe there's somewhat of a disconnect between what we know about Jesus in the Gospel and the way we go about our lives. And tonight, I want to just break this down a little bit more through this idea of gospel fluency.

Gospel Fluency

As we become more sanctified followers of Jesus, the gospel, it should not just be an idea but it actually should show gospel transformation. That's where it actually happens. We don't just start with the gospel and go somewhere else. Or in other words, we must allow the gospel to move from our head to our heart to our hands.

This is just an easy model that I learned in Bible College, just this idea of what it looks like for information to be stored up in our head and not just stay there, but for it to actually affect our emotions, our heart. What we know to be true about the Gospel, not with a head knowledge, but with a heart knowledge — there's a difference there.

And then that should affect the way that we go out and actually perform these things. And a lot of times there's this big disconnect. I think one of the biggest ones in this process between the head and the heart, which will be a big focus of our study tonight.

Jeff Vanderstelt — he's the guy who actually coined this topic, gospel fluency, and he's written a book on it with that same title.

And so tonight I'll occasionally use some of his helpful comments and different things he says regarding this topic. For one of these comments, he says,

The gospel should impact us, not just theologically but also practically.

So the gospel should impact us, not just theologically, but also practically.

And that's true. The message of Jesus in the Gospel is not just some abstract concept like I was mentioning a second ago, but it actually becomes the very foundation for how we set up and go about our lives as Christians. And the more our life is infused with the gospel message, the more fulfilled and satisfied that we become in even the small areas of life in the cities.

Cities Church, in your Member Affirmation of Faith, under the category of Human Condition and Salvation, your elders have stated this concept in similar words to the concept of gospel fluency. They say this,

“The Christian life involves growth in grace through persevering, Spirit-empowered resolve to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.”

Okay, there's a lot going on in that statement, a lot of good things. But ultimately, as we grow in gospel centered living or what we call gospel fluency, right? Making the gospel, the story about Jesus, as the center of all things that we do, we let the the gospel fuel our sanctification and it disperses any sort of temptation.

And so notice how in this portion, from your affirmation of faith, it says that the Christian life involves growth in grace. Think about that. Let's pause there for a second. Growth in grace. What is growth in grace? What does that mean?

Growth in Grace

Well, it's not a growth in godliness.

It's not a growth in our own righteousness. It's not a growth in works. It's a growth in grace, because we can't ever attain these things on our own. But Christ can, Jesus can, and he did. And he's our door to this grace, he’s our door to actual righteousness in our life.

And so often I see people treat the gospel as a starting point for the Christian faith. I'm guilty of this as well, but just as a starting point for our faith, but not the means to continue on, right? You start with the gospel, but you don't continue in the gospel. You continue in something else. You get distracted, you go back to works, right?

And it's surely often times not the end all for the faith. We can easily start in gospel grace and then quickly use it as a platform for more works.

I've experienced this in my own life. You likely have as well, but that is not why Jesus died. Okay, let's think about that. Jesus didn't die, right for this brief moment of acknowledgment and then for us to tell him: All right, thanks, Jesus. We've got it from here. Thanks for dying. We realize that you paid the ultimate price, but like, I'm going to go back to exactly the way things were.

And though I don't think you would actually say this right, I think often times the way we live our lives communicates this idea that Jesus died that way.

We may continue on in the grace that he provides. And so by grace we begin, and by grace we continue until the very end in the Christian life. Or as one mentor in my life personally has put it in every single conversation we've ever had… He always says this:

The way in is the way on

You know, he'd say the way in to the Christian life is the way on in the Christian life. Well, what's the way in? It's Christ, it's the Gospel. And that's the means by which we continue. And Jesus doesn't just save us once, but we can actually experience that saving grace afresh and new each and every day, multiple times a day, because I need that multiple times every single day.

Jeff Vanderstelt has this quote on it,

There's a disconnect many Christians have between the gospel and its power not only to save our souls, but also to change our lives.

That's the idea I'm just trying to parse out a little bit more for us tonight. So then what is this idea of gospel fluency we've talked about, you know, kind of the importance of the gospel being in our lives in all parts.

Defining Gospel

What's gospel fluency? Well, before we tried taking a stab at this compound phase, let's just break it down. Let's do it independently with each word and then just combine them together. So let's look at that first word. It's gospel.

Whenever we're talking about something that's built on the gospel, I never want to assume, especially in a room of people that I don't know, that you guys all know what that means, okay?

And so let's let's always define these terms before using them. As many of you know, there are many different ways that you could describe the gospel in your own words. There's so many different places to start, so many synonyms out there that you could use and just different ways of putting it. But one way I've framed it up is like this:

The gospel is the good news that Jesus's life, death and resurrection has paid the debt of our sins, and it frees us to live a life for God.

Okay, That's just one way of putting it right. We could say it other ways as well. But of course, because the gospel is such a beautiful thing it's a multifaceted truth, there are these layers, dimensions and angles to it, but as people who've been saved by this message, if you've been saved by this, it's our responsibility to then better understand and articulate what this message is in a given moment.

The way we describe this message, it will change based on the goal of the context that we are in. Okay? So for example, if someone asked us to give a one sentence summary of the Bible, how would we sum up what Scripture is like? That could be hard, where do you even start with a question like that? Because there's so many stories and individuals and themes and genres and writers like all of these things. So how do we even start? Well, I think we keep two things in mind here.

Number one, that we must be broad in our answer.

And number two, that Jesus himself says all Scripture points to him, right? He's the fulfillment of all of these things.

So the gospel better be in that definition as well, right? That explanation. And so you could faithfully say that the Bible is the story of God redeeming and restoring a relationship with his people, right? That's just my own words, my own terms. But you could say that the Bible is the story of God redeeming and restoring a relationship with his people because the gospel is in sight in that definition.

But it's also broad enough that you could look at any book of the Bible and apply that type of framework to it and see that, okay, that rings true. And so once again, that's not the only way to summarize even that question that's being asked. But this exercise is a big part of what I want to talk about tonight… how do we apply and frame up and talk about the gospel in different contexts.

We need to find ways to summarize and reapply the prominent truths in this message.

Defining Fluency

So now let's look to this word fluency for a bit, right? We're still defining these terms. Stay with me. Fluency can be explained three different ways. It's either the ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately, the ability to express oneself easily and articulately, or gracefulness and ease of movement or style.

Now I include all three of these because I think that our definitions actually getting at all three of these when we're talking about gospel fluency because the aim in fluency is that you can gracefully and smoothly move from one thing to another. And when applied to the idea of language, our language in which we speak, it means that you're well saturated in your own language and can articulate things from another gospel language more quickly.

So here's an illustration. Who in here took a few years of a foreign language in high school or college? Who here has taken a foreign language before? Okay. Yeah, me too. I took three years of Spanish in high school. Don't ask me about it. I don't remember anything. But what happens when you first start out learning a language?

Well, you just try reciting and understanding small vocabulary words. You start small and you try to associate words in that language with ones that you already know. And then you can understand words, and then you can start to slowly construct sentences, right? And then you can try reciting and going over these sentences, translating things back and forth.

But it takes time. This is a slow process. Doesn't happen overnight. Who in here uses Duolingo? Yeah, it's okay if you're streaks pretty good. There's a reason there's a streak for those things. Because it takes time, right? It takes time and energy and practice. You hear a phrase like Vamos a la Tienda, right? But you still have to parse that.

At least I do still, even though I took three years of Spanish, right? I'm like, Vamos, okay, we're going to go — Let's go. La — the. Tienda — store. Okay, let's go to the store. Cool. Got my phrase. That took time and I had to break it down individually. But eventually, the hope is that you become so fluent that you hear that phrase in that other language and you immediately know exactly what it means without having to do this kind of back and forth dancing between two worlds.

Well, if we combined these words together, gospel and fluency, we get gospel fluency. The goal is similar that we would hear and experience the language of our everyday life and situations and then be able to fluently translate those things into gospel minded moments, speaking the gospel into our own life and also into the lives of others.

And the Gospel should shape everything from the way that we drive to the gym in the morning to how you send that email at work. What your thought life looks like during the day, the type of spouse that you are to one another, and also the way that you might parent some day, right?

So for example, let's say you are a parent of a two year old and you give them their juice bottle every day at the same exact time and it's just like a totally normal rhythm for you guys at this point. But for whatever reason, out of randomness, this kid decides to just chuck the bottle across the kitchen this morning. It's great. And so now there's a sticky juice all over your cabinets and your floor, and it can be tempting to just respond and react in moments like these but it's in moments like these that we must pause and ask the question, how do I respond in this moment so that I lay a foundation for how this child understands the grace of the gospel?

And I'm not saying like, don't discipline your kid. That might be what the grace of the gospel calls for in that moment, right? But it will change how you discipline your child, right? The reason for you as you do it.

And so when you strive to incorporate the gospel into moments like these, Jesus has something so much more than spilled juice on the floor for us. He has a learning opportunity. He has a way for us to enter into this situation and speak a gospel truth about it.

In All of Life

So what is gospel fluency then? It's realizing that there are spiritual implications in big ways and in small all throughout your life.

And with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can leverage these moments for the sake of pointing us back towards Jesus. And we do this so that more and more of our lives are fully submitted and transformed by the Gospel. So from preaching to parenting and from movie watching to family time, the good news gives us the blueprints for how we are to act.

And in given moments, we just need to see the importance of this. And I hope you see as we're talking that we can have some good application to go forth and actually set out to do these things. But before we dive deeper into the specifics of gospel fluency, I want to show you from Scripture where it says to do this.

I mean, after all, I'm just some guy that started talking like 15 minutes ago, right? And you don't know me that well. So let me just try to dispel any skepticism that you have around this topic from not knowing me so that you can truly accept it and feel freed up that God wants to use this type of thing in your life tonight.

Okay, so starting off with our first text, Proverbs 3:5-6. Now, many of you might actually know this piece of scripture by memory, but let's just slow down, walk through. It starts off by saying,

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”

Okay? Just starting there, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

All — It's not a big word, but it has a big meaning to it, right?

When we see all in Scripture, we need to just pause and be like, okay, all means all. It's all of our heart at all times in all places. That's it. That's what's being required of here. And it continues.

And do not lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.

And so these verses aren't saying that the path forward for us is going to be easy at all times, but it's saying that we will have clarity during this journey.

We'll have clarity if we practice this idea of gospel fluency. We're doing what this verse has called us to do, right?

It says it right there — in all your ways, acknowledge him. So it doesn't matter what you're doing in a given moment, how can you be acknowledging Christ in the midst of that moment? Let's look to another verse. Colossians 3:17,

“And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

So whatever we do, it says in our actions, in the way we act and the things we say and the things we even think, we are to do them in the name of Jesus. That's a call to gospel fluency. Let's look to a Ephesians 4:15 that claims that Christians are to be speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head.

Okay, so I wish we had time to go through this entire passage of Ephesians 4, but I would just encourage you to read through it and just see the greater context of this because it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful the way that Paul's putting this all together here. But essentially what we're reading here is that as the body, as the church, we are growing into Christ, who is the head of the church, and how does this growth come about?

What it says there in the text by speaking the truth in love? Well, what is this truth? What is this truth that we're supposed to speak with, this heart of love? Well, he clarifies it. Paul clarifies it, going a little bit further forward. Looking ahead, he says you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Christ.

So we're supposed to be speaking the truth to others in love. And that truth is Christ. What this is saying is that we need to be speaking What is true about Jesus to one another. That is how we grow in the Christian life. That's what he's getting after here. And so if we wish to grow up into Christ in every way, like this text is calling, then we need to hear the truth of the gospel and learn to speak them into our own lives, and into the lives of others.

Our aim isn't philosophy or a new set of rules to follow. Our aim is a person. His name is Jesus, and he's made this very, very clear to us. This is the way he says it and puts it towards religious leaders. In John 5:39-40, he says,

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

So they loved the scriptures that pointed to Jesus, but didn't love and depend on Jesus himself. They missed the entire point here. And the goal of this verse is not that we would see the foolishness of the Pharisees, right? That's not why I'm bringing it up right now.

It's so that we would see our own foolishness alongside them because we are guilty of this at different times in our own life as well. But there's sufficient grace. Let me remind you, let me step into this truth about gospel fluency, that there is grace for you.

I don't want to just say that we've made a mistake — We've messed up poorly. But there's grace for you in the cross of Christ. And so with that, I just to talk a little bit about two main dangers to avoid while trying to be gospel fluent. These are the things you want to stay away from. If you stay away from these, it's so much easier to be gospel fluent in our own lives.

Two Dangers to Avoid

And so the first of these is just losing sight of our overall goal. What's our overall goal? We just talked about it. It's glorifying Christ in and throughout our entire life, speaking the truth of him. So if we lose sight of that, like we're just not going to be doing that altogether. Like, what's our ultimate aim together? It's to do that.

And then the second of these is compartmentalizing our spiritual life. And so if we avoid these things, we'll be blessed by that.

Over Christmas break, my students, I'm the youth pastor of junior high and high school students, so some of my older high school students drove over to my house and played games for one of the days off.

We played some different board games and they introduced me to like one of the most complex but like super exciting games that I've ever played. It's called Twilight Imperium. It's like, ridiculous. It's like, like the most ridiculous of all board games. It takes about 7 to 8 hours to play this game, and it takes even longer the more people you add.

So it was like, I'll just do this out of love for them. And then I got hooked. So I guess we should be careful what you put your heart out there to do for others. And in this game, the way you win is through gaining different victory points and you need ten to win. But it's so complex because there's dimensions of planetary exploration and different attacks and research and developing and currency involved. And each round there's like a diplomacy action where you kind of like vote on things or not things down as far as like what gets voted into law, it's ridiculous. It's like very awesome. But you can see that there's like so many pieces going on. There's always something to kind of like stimulate your thoughts in your mind during these 8 hours that you're playing.

However, it is so easy to become consumed with an aspect of the game and lose sight of, man, I got to be earning these victory points and you forget about what truly matters in that moment. One of the kids, he was kind on me. There were countless times that my friend, he just leaned over and kind of coached me and whispered in my ear, Hey, don't lose sight of the overall goal of this game in your next turn.

And right as he said that, I'm like, there's some strange gospel truth in that. And here we are talking about it because in regard to our spiritual life, this can happen as well. We can become focused upon a dimension of the gospel or of the faith. But if it's not connected to the person and work of Jesus Christ, then it's either going to lead us to moralism and then despair when we fail, and then self-righteousness or just a disconnection between what we know and how we act.

And I'm convinced the more I read Paul's letters that he was excellent at keeping Christ at the center of all things, he says this in Colossians 3:1-4.

“If then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears? Then you also will appear with Him in glory.”

And so it's evident. Christ needs to become our whole life. He needs to become it. And that's what we will continue to discuss. But first, let's look to one other thing to try avoiding in our gospel fluency that'll free us up to do this better.

And it's compartmentalizing our spiritual life.

So I don't know about any of you, but I was the type of underclassman in high school that would act one way at church, right? A freshman in high school, one way at church, and then a totally different way when I was at school with friends on the football team, on the wrestling team. I've heard youth groups refer to this type of person as a hypo-Christian, right. You're being a hypocrite and a Christian at the same time. Great term. I suggest we use it more. But that's what I was doing.

I would put on different masks for different areas in my own life and a lot of the time it would just happen naturally, right? It wasn't as if I was like going into a moment and being like, all right, personality 5, where you at? Like, I need you right now. Like, it just happens naturally where you start acting in different ways.

And so it happened because different parts of my life were siloed off from other parts, and that included my spiritual walk with the Lord. And maybe you have felt this before that, you know, asking the question, why do I act differently with these groups of friends than these ones here? And I'm not just saying like, there's always going to be different people you relate to differently, like those are just part of having emotional intelligence and different situations and circumstances like that will happen to a degree, but is your spiritual walk changing as a result as well? Your spiritual life? Is it compartmentalize to a Sunday morning? Or when you're meeting with a church friend or when you're having a devotional with the Lord? Or does the living God have access to your entire life?

Because he deserves our entire life. That means our entire schedule, every single moment belongs to him, even with the lesson like gospel fluency, right? As we're talking about this idea of wanting to do this, we can still do this without God, right? Like during my prep on this, I was countless times was like, Am I asking the Lord to meet me right now or am I doing this in my own strength?

It's crazy to me that we can do that in our own life, that we can be with Christ for a second, and the very next wandering and doing things on our own and so much of our own disconnect in our spiritual life. It stems from doing the right things in the wrong way.

Let me say that again, so much of the disconnect in our spiritual life is doing the right thing in the wrong way. You could break down so many different issues and just see that this is the pattern. You know, you were doing the right thing, but you just didn't do it in the right way. We can spend time in God's word looking at him, but we could do it by looking at him from afar as if he's a concept we got to understand with our intellect. That's how you grab ahold of him. Or we can invite him into the moment of our learning, into our church services with us, recognizing his presence, pause during our scriptures, ask for his help. I mean, that's what prayer is here for. It's so that we can live closely in communion with the Lord and just asking God, Lord, help me to see what you have for me today in this passage.

Like we're going through Genesis right now as a church. We're like in Genesis 19 and 20 right now, I'm like, Lord, please show me what you have for me here today in these chapters, because I need to see and I can't do that on my own.

Jackie Hill Perry says this regarding this topic, it's a long quote, but I'm going to read it,

“I have realized that if I am not gospel fluent in my thought life, then I won't be in my speech. If I am not gospel fluent in my speech, then I won't be in my evangelism or my discipleship. I've come across many godly men and women who are walking through life with the people in their churches by teaching them how to study scripture, helping them understand spiritual disciplines, finances, relationships and such. Yet the deceptive blind spot in their discipleship relationships is that we have discipled people in how to successfully do all of the above without Christ. How easy it is to create women and men in our image who are living morally correct lives while being gospel deficient. We do a great disservice to the people God has called us to disciple if we disciple them into any thing other than Christ.”

So what I'm getting at is a desire to see disciples of Jesus Christ live like the God of the universe can't be put into a box because He cannot. And not only should we see the Gospel in all of Scripture, but we do not want to miss the gospel moments each and every day, right? Just as we have a gospel lens on when we read our Old Testament looking for Christ, who all of these things are just a shadow of the true thing to come.

Can't that be true of our own life and experience? Well, it is because that's what those verses we read earlier said, and that's where gospel fluency comes in. Jeff Vanderstelt again says Gospel fluency is about speaking the truth about Jesus into the everyday stuff. I love that. Just the stuff, the things of life so that more and more of our lives are fully submitted to and transformed by the gospel.

So if this is the case, then what reason should you give people to abstain from sexual activity prior to marriage? Let's just think of a case study here. Do we just tell them, the Bible says not to. That you're not supposed to, because that's true. But we can even easily look to one of Paul's letters when he says to abstain from sexual immorality. There you have it. That's good. That's truth. That's gospel truth. The Bible tells you to do so. And although that's a right answer, it does not mean that it's the most faithful or the most helpful answer to that person. A more faithful answer could do the hard work of saying that Paul says not to because we have been bought with a price and so we're not our own.

We would argue that we are to live not for ourselves, but instead live a life for Christ. And we can actually achieve that life set upon Christ. Now, through the Holy Spirit's power which has been given to us, you see how just a little bit more explanation connects us to a deeper truth in the gospel message for this person.

Paul connects it to the gospel because if it's not connected to the finished work of Jesus, then we are once again going to be on that path to moralism, which will eventually lead to us messing up at some point, and that will lead to us having shame. And this creates a false dichotomy in us because we know that Scripture, it claims that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We know that. Yet why do I feel shame all the time? Because we're not living as those who are in Christ Jesus. We're not bringing the gospel in those moments and realizing just walking out, just like your church statement says in the grace that Jesus has for us, that's not gospel centered living because we aren't being gospel fluent in our application.

And I just think as young people here in the church that we can do a lot better for the sake of our own life, the sake of our our spouses, our future spouse, for the sake of our future kids or current kids. I don't know where all you guys are at, but I think we can do better.

And we need to be willing to do the hard work of breaking down the gospel and seeing what about that message is in sight for us in a given moment. So let's go back to this case study, right? For the sake of just putting this idea of gospel fluency to work, let's ask that question again. What reason should we give people to abstain from sexual activity prior to marriage?

We talked a little bit about it, but we can go even deeper into that. We surely won't say all there is to be said about this tonight, but we can start in the right area. We can give them Jesus. We could tell them that about the picture that God has given us through His love for His people. It's the picture of a husband pursuing a bride and God loved his bride so much that He took on flesh in the form of a baby named Jesus, and he humbly lived as a human for 33 years. And we also know that the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he was tempted in all the same ways that we are. And so he fully understands us, the church, his bride, because he put himself into our shoes.

And Jesus loved his bride so much, enough to serve her and give up his life as a ransom for her. She was unfaithful to him and gave herself to sin, though. And yet Jesus still gave his own life to purchase her out of her adulterous enslavement to sin. He died to give her freedom to make her peer once again and give her unending love.

And then he rose again and went to prepare a place for this bride. And one day he will take her home to be with him. And yet Jesus still gave his own life to purchase her out of all these things. I mean, think about it. He's been waiting for 2000 years preparing this place patiently, waiting for the day he can be reunited to his bride, which is the church.

And that's going to be the greatest wedding party of all. But just talk and think about a faithful, loving and patient lover who is willing to wait for the love of his life. In this picture, we get about Christ and his bride, the church. He does not push his own wants and desires upon his bride until the time is right.

So when? So then the question is what reason should we give people to abstain from sexual immorality in their life? Sexual relationships before marriage? The reason we could give them is Jesus's faithfulness to us. We are his bride and we live to tell the story of his love for us. And he can give us the patience and the perspective and the strength to do the same in our own life.

Do you see how that just goes so much deeper than just saying the Bible tells me so. We show others how the Gospel gets there, gets us there and gets them there. And friends, this is just one example of what it looks like for the Gospel to permeate our heart and our mind and our thoughts. And you could give plenty of other examples and run through them as well.

Right? Let's think. Think you and your best friend get in a huge argument. Well How do you speak gospel life into that situation? What does redemption look like? What does forgiveness look like? How is that connected to Jesus? Or your sibling gets diagnosed with a chronic illness? Well, how do you speak the gospel into that situation?

Although I find these exercises very encouraging and helpful, we're not going to get into every single one of these tonight for the sake of time. But the last thing I do want to do with you guys tonight before we close is not just to leave you with another great idea about Jesus. Right? Candid is the name of this ministry. And it's hopefully going above just different topics and learning how to kind of be a little bit more, say candid, with one another and just learning how to just do life and apply these truths to our own lives and things like that.

And so I want to give you some practical application for this topic tonight. I don't want to just to be an idea that we don't know how to reach and what we're grasping for. We don't have to get there. I want to break this down. And so tonight I'm just going to give you a couple of different ways that we can practice gospel fluency in our own life.

Application

Some of them are going to be straightforward. Some of them we'll need to kind of talk through just a little bit here. The first of which is gospel centered disciplines and rhythms, gospel centered disciplines and rhythms.

We could call this a basic means of grace. You guys may have heard this term before. The phrase ‘basic means of grace’ is really just a broader category, referring to all the ways that God continues to pour out His grace to men and women today in the church.

Examples of this would include the reading of or hearing God's Word preached, fellowship, prayer, fasting, serving, and so on. And so some of these are Christian disciplines as well, spiritual disciplines, while others are just normal rhythms of the Christian life, like showing up to a church gathering fellowship and those types of things. And while this is all ultimately for our good in building up the church, as I mentioned earlier, in that passage of John 5, we can do the right thing in the wrong way.

We saw that of the Pharisees in that passage. We can become the most disciplined Christian but lack a true relationship with the Creator. And if I told you my dad, Craig, Craig Mashburn, if I told you what he enjoys to do with his free time, right? And I mentioned that he is the captain of the fire department out in California. We only have one. No, of a certain one down like San Bernardino County. And then I went on and I just went on about all these great things about Craig for like half an hour. Well, then you would probably know about Craig pretty well. Right? That’s just common knowledge. That's just two plus two equals four. But what do you actually know about him, right? You would know about him quite a bit. But do you know Craig personally? And the same can happen in our disciplines and rhythms about Jesus, right? We can learn a lot about the person of Jesus in our study of him. But are we treating our Bible like a textbook as if he's something to be looked upon from?

Or is it creating in us a deeper desire for relationship with him where we actually commune with him in a very special and significant kind of way? I want to encourage you to have this true purpose of growth in mind when we approach these different things, these gospel centered disciplines and rhythms. Let's not lose sight of what we are doing them for.

Number two is maintaining gospel lenses in media consumption. Okay, what in the world do I mean by this? Well, it's this idea that all truth is God's truth, right? Like if there was an ultimate objective truth in the world, which there is from God, and he's disclosed that truth to us, well, then we should be able to see the world around us through this lens of truth, gospel truth, which means any time that you're reading an amazing book and you get to that point in the book where there's just this poignant and powerful line, right? Like you read that line earlier from The Chronicles of Narnia. Right? We should be able to pause and just and look at what part of the gospel is in sight for us. Because if something is so sincere and good and it rings in our heart in a certain type of way, the reason it's ringing is because it's a shadow or a depiction of the beautiful truth that we see in the gospel.

And the same is true of music, lyrics and movies in the news and much more. There are these undertones of the gospel truth in our society in subtle ways, in the ways we consume. And so if we analyze with ready eyes, we can see more and more beautifully these metaphors and these short little glimpses of this bigger message.

And a lot of times these things, the reason why they're stimulating to our intellect and to our emotions and even to our humanity is because they are true. They are true in Christ. Now, this in some ways brushes up with this idea of Christian Hedonism. You guys have probably heard of this idea, maybe, John Piper coined this in his book, Desiring God.

It's the view that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

So this is essentially what the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is getting at in asking,

“What is the chief and of man?”

And the answer,

“Man's chief and is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”

But being satisfied, right, finding this enjoyment in God, that's a pretty broad application for our lives. I believe that we can find this dynamic of enjoyment of God even by watching a good movie with a gospel lens. Why? Because what makes a good movie good? Well, it's because it has gospel truths and motives in the film that we can spot if we are willing to look for it. So I hope you get the idea there that you're just trying to be a little bit more gospel minded, even in the ways you go about these things.

That's a way for us to bridge the gap between what we are participating in and what we know to be true in Scripture. It's the same reason that I was able to bring up that board game illustration because my mind was there in that moment and I was like, wow, that's cool. There's something there. I was able to parse that out over time.

Okay, next one is passing out the gospel. We'll move a little quickly through these. We're almost done here, but this one is essentially, it's one way to become fluent in the gospel. It's considering the different parts or the elements and pillars of the gospels, of Jesus's gospel ministry. And so as we talked earlier, right, Gospel fluency doesn’t come overnight. It takes hard work. And translation, we're not going to be able to see exactly what's there for us in a given moment. We're not going to do this perfectly either. But what we can start to do is to break down parts of Jesus's gospel story. So if we look to six different parts of his story, we can look to his perfect life.

We can look to 1) his incarnation, 2) his perfect life, 3) his sacrificial death, 4) his resurrection, 5) his ascension, and 6) his promised return.

So these are all different parts of Jesus's ministry. What this is doing is it's giving us some vocab, right, in order to start the translation process for us.

So my brother in law, he's got this chronic illness called Crohn's disease. And so in conversations with him recently, he's reflected so much on the joy he is looking forward to having when he has a new body in heaven someday, right? That's the part of the gospel that touches him really deeply in that specific way because of his circumstances. And so in that like think about how did he get there?

Well, he's obviously looking towards the resurrection of Jesus. Not that that’s the only thing that's in sight but that could definitely be there because Jesus had a glorified body. And if we believe in him. We put our faith and our trust and our hope there. We too, are going to have a new body someday and we'll be in that glorified state.

So that's something he's clinging to. The other thing he could be clinging to in that given moment is Jesus's promised return, right? Why? Or because he doesn't know if he's going to die before Jesus comes on earth. And so when Jesus does return for his bride, which he will, if that's during his lifetime, that's the part that's the the thing in the gospel that can give him so much hope.

That's how he's speaking the gospel into that moment in his own life. So you could say that these things are in sight for for him personally, just as Vanderstelt says, gospel fluent people are able to translate the world around them and the world inside of them, through the lens of the gospel.

You're trying to put it through this lens of the gospel. And when we start breaking it down, the goal would be for us to to make these connections not too quickly as well. Right? Because I'm not saying that our answer should simply be something like, you know, when a friend is going through a hard thing and and there's a lot of like just shame or maybe some hurt going on there.

You know, the best thing in that moment isn't always going to be God's got a plan, right? That could be a little bit damaging, although that's true. Once again, we've got to show how God has a plan for them through the gospel because hurting people need to be specifically led to a part of Jesus's story in order for that truth to be received a little bit better, a little bit more gentler.

And I think it’s one main reason we struggle to comfort others well with the gospel, I've had those moments where you try comfort in and you say the wrong thing and you're like, I'm not helping. But I think the reason we struggle in that department is because we struggle with seeing it ourselves in our own life with practicing it ourselves.

If we're not doing this in our own life, speaking gospel truth into it, how are we going to be helpful to the lives of those around us? And so it's just encouragement to keep leaning into this idea and hopefully see how these things are applications.

Another one for us is asking pressing questions. So essentially some of the questions that we could ask might be these… How is this in line with the truths of the gospel? We're in the midst of a moment of a circumstance… How is something here in line with the truth the gospel? You start looking at and questioning. And that's these things aren't mutually exclusive. They're all kind of working together, the different applications.

As we seek gospel fluency, you might ask, What about Jesus in his work might be good news to me or to another today? In what ways you can look for these things if you have a question, or how can I bring the hope of the Gospel to bear on this situation so that this person will be comforted in will be glorified.

These questions can serve, can stir us, but we still need to isolate what those needs are. And so I'm not saying this is the only way to do this. Think of a question yourself that would prompt you to become more gospel minded throughout your day and it would stir and serve you to kind of put on that lens for gospel truth in given moments.

Well, let's go to the last one and then we'll close here. The last application point for how to become more gospel fluent is asking for refreshed desire.

I've given you many applications for gospel fluency tonight, but none of them will truly matter or change our hearts or have lasting results in our life unless the Spirit of God moves in our life. And so, above all other things, let's learn to be people that pray, that pray for these things in our life. We need to pray that we will continue to see the worth of this labor, of this process. It's hard work, growing in fluency in the gospel is hard work, but it has wonderful results and we will become encouraged and fulfilled in this work as a result, being tethered to this message.

And let's also pray maybe for a re-enchantment of the Gospel in our own life. If this good news about Jesus does not stir us, it says less about the beauty in that message in a given moment than it does about our own heart in that moment. And so sometimes we just need to ask the Holy Spirit to just help us see these things, to help illuminate God's Word.

And that prayer will be answered because God says it will be. He can give us newfound desire and excitement and joy in the story of what Jesus has done for you. The greatest story that has ever been told. I just love that. And when we seek out this message more and more, our minds will will just tend to go there.

More and more will be used to this idea of kind of snapping out of a given moment and being heavenly minded. Like Paul calls us to be there in Colossians 3.

Because we talk about what we love, if you think about it, we talk about what we love and we love what we talk about. Talk about what we love and we love what we talk about.

Hopefully in that would be the message of the gospel. And even if we don't have a desire for this message in a given moment, we can still desire to have that desire and just pray that prayer. Lord, I don't have the desire, but I do desire to have the desire, right? Like give that to me.

I want that. I don't want the actual thing, but I want to want the thing. And that can be a prayer that we can pray in that as well. Prayer, after all, is an action of being gospel minded. It bridges our experience in the ordinary and brings us a little bit closer to the divine in which Christ is seated on high as our Savior and Lord.

And so my hope tonight is just as a result of just being here together, looking through God's word, looking at this topic, is that we'll continue to see our constant need for Jesus and see how Christ can have even more of our life each day, even in small ways through this practice.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, I just thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. And what a big topic I feel like we’re even just barely scratching the surface as we talk here about what this can look like. I would love to just run through, you know, just multiple different scenarios. But here's the thing, Lord, we're going to be given these scenarios in our own lives and, you know, put to the task of seeking you in the midst of it. We're not going to do that on our own. We have others who are just faithful around us, who are your church that you've given us, your Holy Spirit, which you've put in us. But we have a big task to walk through this every single day. And so we just ask for your help. Help us to see you a little bit clearer.

We know that when we ask these desires, according to your name and their good desires, their desires that you desire, Lord and so I just pray that you would make that a little bit more true in each one of our lives. Allow us to have some of these different just tools in our tool belt, if you will, of just these different applications to looking for the gospel in our life. So that way we might become more fluent in dancing between what is our reality here and what is a truth from your gospel in the midst. So I just thank you for for our time tonight. Would you use it? Jesus, we thank you for what you've done. It's in Jesus name we pray, amen.