The Need To Continually Hear The Gospel

In Phillip Cary’s book Good News For Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have To Do, he writes some challenging words when it comes to the church’s role in repeating the gospel. He writes…

The church is in the business of cultivating ordinary Christians, people who are united to Christ by faith and are in it for the long haul, like people in a good marriage.

It transforms people, not by giving them life-changing experiences but by repetition, continually telling the story of Christ so that people may hear and take hold of him by faith.

For we do not just receive Christ by faith once at the beginning of our Christian lives and then go on to do the real work of transformation by our good works. We keep needing Christ the way hungry people need bread, and we keep receiving him whenever we hear the gospel preached and believe it.

So what transforms us over the long haul is not one or two great life-changing sermons (although these can be helpful from time to time) but the repeated teaching of Christ, Sunday after Sunday, so that we never cease receiving him into our hearts.