Visiting Speaker - Chaplain Troy Ahrens

If I could sum up the gospel in the clearest way, to me it is this, God wants me in heaven more than I wanna be there. Others have said it like Philip Yancey, there's nothing you can do to make God love you more. There's nothing you can do to make God love you less. Right? I just love that idea though. It's a prayer of mine. You can take it. You can steal it. Go ahead. I just love to sit there sometimes and say, god, you want me there more than I wanna be there. [01:07:33] (42 seconds)  #GodWantsYouInHeaven

But there is something about this issue we have in not accepting what the words of scripture are telling us. Even when we didn't wanna have anything to do with God, he worked out our salvation. Meaning, God loved us before and he wanted to save us, and we didn't have anything we didn't we didn't do anything to get him to do that. But we when you are struggling with, am I worthy of heaven? When am am I gonna can I get there? Am am I good enough? Do you realize that when you are struggling with that, which I struggle with that too, when you are struggling with that question of your personal salvation, that you're actually reflecting your belief that God is hesitant to save you. [01:06:32] (60 seconds)  #UnmeritedGrace

God is always ahead. He's always ahead. And yet when we struggle with the sense of, like, am I good enough to be saved? Am I doing enough things right? Our focus is not on the initiation of god. And in fact, it's okay that you struggle with that because we live in a performance driven society. Of course, we would struggle with our salvation in a sense of performance. Did I get the grade that is worthy of heaven? Is is is the road so narrow that it's only the a students that get to heaven in terms of following the law? Do the do some people with b's get it, or is is c passing for heaven? [01:04:35] (46 seconds)  #PerformanceVsGrace

There is so much more going on. This is the grand work of God. The grand work of his whole saving activity is it's not just about here. Colossians says that the cross of Christ wasn't just for us on Earth. It was for those beings that had been unfallen in heaven. Why would the cross be for them? They're sinless. Because there's something that's going on that's much bigger than your personal salvation and my personal salvation, though that's really important. And so when you look at these passages and you see the context, this part I read because of the great love with which he loved us, interestingly, love repeated twice, emphasis is like, I really want you to get this. God loves you [01:03:33] (51 seconds)  #CosmicRedemption

Paul has just been saying that, you know, the work of the gospel, the work of our salvation, this is the working of his great might that he worked in Christ. Work is actually repeated twice, I think emphasizing the work of salvation is his. That is his work that he did in Christ, and Jesus is the one who fills all in all. So you have this grand message in Paul's mind, and then he dives into the the the gift of your salvation is a free gift of God. For you, it's a free gift of God. But before he got there, he had already widened the lens. It is so much more than just you getting to heaven. [01:02:48] (45 seconds)  #GodsWorkNotMine

And I I remember grabbing the report card and going, I need to appreciate this, and I actually had to struggle to appreciate my a's. I look at young Troy, and I see a kid in the grip of performance expectations. Pastor Sam, just in February, said these words to start off his sermon. There's a universal human instinct that tells us that if we want to be right, then we have to do right. We can sometimes see it in our careers, we see it in our social status, most dangerously, it shows up in our faith. [00:55:30] (46 seconds)  #EarnedApprovalMindset

The gospel, I think, is often too good to be true because we are people that earn our way to the promotion. We are people that earn our way to the grade, and that doesn't that doesn't mesh. And so I'll wrap it up with this right there, The desire of ages. If you're unaware, the desire of ages as an Adventist is a trigger, like, in a good way usually, hopefully, for Ellen White, a founder of the Adventist Church. And this is this is her most beloved book. I mean, other people love other books. I mean, some would say the great controversy. [01:13:38] (63 seconds)  #GospelTooGoodToBelieve

So for that neurosurgeon, pick a neurosurgeon for, say, doctor so and so, what is in her that is driving her to succeed at such a high level because you are cutting into people's brains? Can you turn that off in other areas of your life? Is there a neurosurgeon out there where she has a deep faith in God and she has this life based around performance as she should? But when it comes to her faith in being a child of God, where is that performance that's so much a part of her professional life? [00:59:09] (43 seconds)  #FaithVsProfession