This is not for anyone for whom everything is great. This is not for those with perfect families, perfect faith, a perfect congregation, or perfect health. This is for the guilty and the desolate.
I think you know the Gospel, but you have never believed it, not really. You thought the Gospel was for those who are nice, those who have things under control. You thought the Gospel was for those whose sin is manageable, who seem to breeze through life without any regrets.
You think that your sin is too great, that God would not want a sinner such as you. You think that your sin disqualifies you from serving in your congregation. You think that people would shun you if they knew who you “really are.” You think that God is visiting the consequences of your sin upon your children. Otherwise, why would they suffer the way that they do? What did they do to deserve what has happened to them?
You were always in the Church, but you were somehow sold a lie about the mercy of God. Somehow you came to believe that God would make everything in your life turn out okay if only you kept “believing.” But your faith wasn’t in Christ; it was in your faith. In other words, your faith was in you, in your ability to go on believing things about God.
You heard the Gospel, but you didn’t really believe it. Because the Gospel is not “everything will be okay in this life.” The Gospel isn’t “God accepts people who don’t do anything bad enough to disqualify them from grace.” The Gospel isn’t “as long as you keep up your end of the Law, then God will bless you and your family.”
The Gospel is one thing, and one thing only: Jesus Christ, crucified to save sinners. All sinners. You. And especially the bad sinners, who can’t figure out why nothing seems to go right for them. Who think, like Job’s friends, that there must be something they’ve done or left undone that has brought about these circumstances. Who are out of control and can’t drag themselves out of the pits they seem inevitably to dig. The Gospel is for those who can’t quite believe that Jesus died also for them. The Gospel is for those who recoil in horror from the awful reality of their own sin. The Gospel is for you.
Balaam's Ass 