God saved you for Himself; God saved you by Himself; God saved you from Himself.

The man who has truly believed in his heart ... his life will be marked by a biblical confession of Christ in word and deed.

Entering in the narrow gate is allowing Him to define your life, and not in general terms. See, there's your problem. 'Oh, Jesus is everything to me, and Jesus is Lord.' Okay, specifically though, explain to me what that means: what has it cost you, how have you changed your life from the course the rest of the world is walking in?

Oh, that God would raise up missionaries. I don't wish the same things your parents want for you. They want for you security and insurance and nice homes. They want for you cars and respect. I want for you the same thing I want for my son, that one day he takes a banner, the banner of Jesus Christ, and he places it on a hill where no one has ever placed a banner before, and he cries out, 'Jesus Christ is Lord,' even if it costs my son his life.

To receive the gospel is to receive an entirely different view of reality where Christ is the epicenter of all things. He becomes the center of our universe, the source, the purpose, the goal, and the motivation of all that we are and do. When a man receives the gospel, his entire life begins to be lived out in a different context, and that context is Christ.

So you walk up to this man sinner and you say, "God loves you and He has a wonderful plan for your life!" and he goes, "What? God loves me? That's fantastic. I LOVE ME, TOO! And He loves me more than I love me? Well, that's hard to imagine. I'll take a God like that. You got two of them?"

It is only against the pitch blackness of the night that we see the glory of the stars. And it is only against the pitch blackness of man's radical depravity that we can begin to see the glories of the gospel.