If you think you deserve to be a Christian . . .

"If you think you deserve to be a Christian, I promise you: you're not." (Mark Dever)

This is the kind of preaching that kids need to hear. They need to hear from the start that the starting place of the Gospel is that we are undeserving. If in time we lapse into thinking that by reason of our religious performances (or anything else) we deserve to be Christians, we have turned away from the Good News of Christ.

I want my children to feel that the peril of not trusting Christ is greater than the peril of drugs or sexual promiscuity, or any of the other evils that can ensnare them and make them miserable. I want them to see that being cut off from Christ is the real peril, so that they hate sin first and foremost because it separates them from God, and not primarily because it makes them feel bad about themselves, or kills their brain cells, or establishes dysfunctional relationships.