Our greatest need is not to try harder. Our greatest need is a new heart.

It's important to realize that we adopt not because we are rescuers. No. We adopt because we are rescued.

While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.

We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical.

The gospel confronts us with the hopelessness of our sinful condition. But we don't like what we see of ourselves in the gospel, so we shrink back from it.

And as we meet needs on earth, we are proclaiming a gospel that transforms lives for eternity. The point is not simply to meet a temporary need or change a startling statistic; the point is to exalt the glory of Christ as we express the gospel of Christ through the radical generosity of our lives.

We need to know what the Bible says about abortion and marriage, poverty and slavery, and we need to see how all of these issues fundamentally relate to the gospel.