Day 4 – Read Philippians 2:1-18, Pray Psalm 19:14

This is a reading from John Piper that powerfully calls us to gospel confidence.  It is from a message about Romans 1:14-17. 

… when believers know and love and live on the meat of the gospel, we will be so gospel-filled and gospel-shaped and gospel-dependent and gospel-driven and gospel-hoping and gospel-joyful that no one will need to tell us why we need to share the gospel or how to share the gospel. We will be so thankful and so desperately, day-by-day dependent on the gospel for our own hope of eternal life, and our own sanity, and our own stability, and our own marriages or singleness, that it will be impossible not to know that people need the gospel and why they need it and how it relates to their biggest needs – because we know we need it, and why we need it, and how it meets our biggest needs day by day.

One of the great reasons Paul was so eager to preach the gospel to believers (verse 15) and why I am so eager to preach his gospel to you, is that, if we thrive day-by-day on the meat of the gospel – if the gospel becomes a day-by-day, hour-by-hour instrument of God's power in our lives to save us – then our witness to family and friends and strangers will not be an artificial scheme but the very heartbeat of the way we think and feel and fight the fight for faith and love every day.