How the Gospel Shapes Our Everyday Responses – Hf #306

In hard seasons, in mundane moments and everything in between, the Gospel needs to shape our responses, our attitude and our home.  Often we think of the Gospel as something that was important at that moment of salvation. Christ died for me, I'm forgiven...then the Christian life starts. But the Christian life is the Gospel. It affects our work, our marriages, our parenthood, our attitudes, and responses to all that life throws at us. And that's exactly what we are discussing today. Let's dive in! Listen to the Podcast: You can find the notes for this episode down below. And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.    Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. What is the “goal” of the Christian life? “For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” – Philippians 1:19-23 Living in light of the Gospel: “It is our obligation, as people created and owned by God, to give him the honor and glory that is due to him, to live and speak and act and think in a way that recognizes and acknowledges his authority over us. We are made by him, owned by him, dependent on him, and therefore accountable to him.” - What is the Gospel? By Greg Gilbert Finding Glory in the Mundane Moments You see, I struggle sometimes with finding worth in the mundane. I struggle finding glory in the ordinary. I sometimes struggle knowing how the second load of dishes or sweeping the sidewalk is worth anything.  Do you ever struggle with this? Do you ever struggle knowing how our work in the home matters to God? Both of these books this year have helped with that. I feel like I’ve gone on a similar journey as the author has in Glory in the Ordinary. I love how she’s open about her struggle with this as well: “Like all major changes, my early days as a stay-at-home mom rocked me to the core. I had gone from days filled with fruitful conversations to days filled with crying and blank stares from two needy babies. Over time I began to see that being home had inherent value, but what I couldn’t immediately see was how the work at home had value as well. It was not merely about staying home to take care of the children (which made sense to my exhausted brain); I had to learn there was value in the laundry and cleaning too.” – Glory in the Ordinary page 25 This is the impactful part, she goes on to say: “What I’ve learned is that God is glorified in the mundane work as much as he is in the magnificent. In fact, it is in the mundane moments, the moments where we live each and every day, where we come to see the true greatness of God and his love for us.” – Glory in the Ordinary page 25 Life is lived out in these tiny moments. I may not always have the mental capacity to remember and realize that I am doing big, grand work, even when I’m scrubbing toilets, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Something that I love throughout her book is this concept of how our culture views work in the home versus how God does. Our culture views work as simply a means to an end. We work just enough to be able to afford leisure time. And we look down on those blue collar jobs or work that seem to have little worth, such as workingMcDonald’s. We value big important jobs. We admire people who are in charge of large ministries who are making changes in the world. That’s not a bad thing to admire those people, but we tend to put all our value into these jobs or those people. So we tend to think then,