"Sent with the Gospel!"

"Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures..." 1 Corinthians 15:1-4

I am taking a Bible Study at church based on a book called "Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church" by Ed Stetzer. This morning as I was doing the study I was reminded of the importance of the Gospel in our daily lives--not just for salvation, but for living! Stetzer writes, "the point of living a missional life is the gospel. Without the gospel there is no mission. The gospel is the goal of the mission." He comments about how we get so caught up in the going and in the strategy and in all the little details, that we forget the Gospel!

As followers of Christ, we have all been "sent" out! Jesus says in John 20:21, "Peace to you! AS the Father has sent Me, I also send you!" And Stetzer writes that "our greatest calling is being sent...with the same mission and message as Jesus." I found that as I studied this I was challenged to think of myself as "one sent" to my children--not to be the best mother with the perfectly behaved children, but rather to live out and communicate the message of the Gospel in my home so that my children see the message of Christ--both in my successes and in my failures! And to do this, I need the Gospel to transform and empower me everyday!