Suddenly contemporary Christianity sales pitches don't seem adequate anymore. Ask Jesus to come into your heart. Invite Jesus to come into your life. Pray this prayer, sign this card, walk down this aisle, and accept Jesus as your personal Savior. . . We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him. Accept him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don't we need him?

Spiritual deception is dangerous -and damning.

If we are going to accomplish the global purpose of God, it will not be primarily through giving our money, as important as that is. It will happen primarily through giving ourselvs. This is what the gospel represents and this is what the gospel requires.

God has made a way of salvation for the lost. Not a way, but the way. And this is the good news - the gospel.

We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community.

So the challenge for us is to live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.

There is a sense in which the danger of our lives increases in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.