God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
How would you describe yourself?
1. Are you on fire for God?
2. Are you for the first time realizing that you may not be a Christian?
3. Are you beginning to take your personal relationship with God more seriously?
4. Does your life resemble the values of the world more than the Word?
5. Do you love holiness and hate sin?
6. Do you strive to fight the sin of your heart and not simply address your sinful behaviors?
7. Do you like attending church?
8. Do you appreciate and obey your parents?
9. Do you enjoy reading and studying the Bible?
10. Are you prepared for the new freedoms in your life now that you’re getting older?
11. Do you have strong personal convictions?
12. Are you getting ready to head off to college and move away from your family for the first time in your life?
13. Are you experiencing significant anxiety as you think of the future?
We are not encouraged to forsake our sin by having our senses amused or our preferences coddled. The Gospel is inherently and irreducibly confrontational. It cuts against our perceived righteousness and self-sufficiency, demanding that we forsake cherished sin and trust in someone else to justify us. Entertainment is therefore a problematic medium for communicating the Gospel, because it nearly always obscures the most difficult aspects of it – the cost of repentance, the cross of discipleship, the narrowness of the Way. Some will disagree, arguing that drama can give unbelievers a helpful visual image of the Gospel. But we have already been given such visual images. They are the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the transformed lives of our Christian brothers and sisters (Mark Dever and Paul Alexander).
