Ryan Bailey
When was the last time you knew the right thing to do, but struggled to find the motivation to do it? Although we may have times where we want to please and obey God wholeheartedly, there will be other times when we have no motivation to do the right thing and we want to be…
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Why We Sin and Why We Need to Stop From the moment we believed the Gospel, we were given a regenerated heart. That heart loves God, desires to please Him, longs to be with Him, and is willing to sacrifice for Him. However, the regenerate heart is “encased” in sinful flesh. The flesh hates God,…
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In our last post, we looked at a powerful tool for staying connected to Christ. But before we go into other options for how to stay connected to Christ throughout an entire day, you might be thinking, “Ryan, you have no idea how my sinful nature works. I can have all the right intentions to…
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Notice that when we talk about the gospel, it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not the Gospel of __________ (insert your name). The Gospel is primarily about Him. The J.B. Phillips’ translation of Colossians 1:15-20 makes this clear. It reads, “Now Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God. He existed…
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In our last post, we looked at why Christ is our first principle. If Christ is going to be our first principle, then we need to focus way more on Him than we do on overcoming our sins, loving our families, dreaming about success, or anything else. We are going to discuss several ways to…
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In the early 1990’s, I was sitting in Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York City, listening to Tim Keller preach. In that sermon, he said something to the effect of “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only the way to be saved but is the primary way we grow.” I was captivated by that…
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Ok, now we have the word Gospel defined as good news, and we saw the dilemma that though God loves us and desires us to always be with Him, our sin demands that an eternity’s worth of God’s wrath be poured out to satisfy justice. Now, let’s get into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The…
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In yesterday’s post, we learned that the word Gospel means good news. What about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that makes it good news? To answer that question, we need to go to the beginning. God is the Creator. As with any creator, He knows our purpose and how we are designed. Out of all…
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Yesterday, we learned that all of us have good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs to accomplish these good works. There may be some good works that we can’t wait to do. However, what if we don’t want to do the good…
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As we saw yesterday, unhealthy drivenness can be a symptom of shame. Despondency can also be a symptom of shame. Instead of feeling the pressure to validate our worth through achievements, we can feel so defeated and hopeless about who we are that despondency becomes ingrained. Ironically, we can be unhealthily driven in one area…
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