This week in Promise Kingdom the kids will be studying Christ's ascension from Acts 1:1-14 (Lesson #43 in Old Story New). Can you believe we're over half done with our NT curriculum and yet just now getting out of the gospels! That's how central the life and death of Christ is to our faith. We can't spend too much time studying Jesus, getting to know Him, listening to Him teach and respond to critics, watching Him heal the sick and the weak and shepherd His disciples as He walked the road to Calvary and Glory!

How often do you meditate on the person and work of Jesus? How much time do you give to considering what He's done in taking the wrath that you deserved and in return giving you His very own righteousness? We are told to clothe ourselves with the gospel (Ephesians 6:10-19). I think that's something we need to do every single day. We have, in the words of Paul Tripp, "gospel amnesia"! I believe that every act of disobedience of ours is rooted in either a lack of understanding of or a lack of belief in the gospel.

Sin does not grow in the soil of true gospel grace. A heart in the grip of true grace does not "sin that grace may abound." It's unthinkable when the gospel is uppermost in our affections.

That's the problem. It's not always uppermost in our affections. We're frail, forgetful people. Which is why we need strategies to help us remember, to grow in our understanding of and application of the gospel to our lives each day. What's yours? Do you have one?

I commend to you a book that has helped me over the years to keep the gospel fresh in my affections, and has recently been of tremendous encouragement. If you don't have Milton Vincent's, A Gospel Primer, get it now and read it, meditate on it, memorize it. Oh, and it's filled with Scripture as well!

Whatever you have to do, arm yourself with the truth of the gospel, and let it define you on a deeper level, more and more each day.

For His glory and our joy!

Pastor Jonathan