Part 11 - Productivity 

Transcript

I want to talk about the gospel tonic this morning, that I think we all need.

Output is something that if you're like me you can get very focussed upon, you think about the success of your day in terms of how much should I produced, how much have I done. It's a very Western thing. Rather than just being and enjoying, it's about what have I done today and we define ourselves by output, but the gospel tonic is very different to that. The gospel tonic is that we're not defined by our works.

So listen to this and it's very encouraging. "For it is by grace you've been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." So think of a drink of tonic, on a warm, blistering day and it's just come out of the fridge like this, and it's nice and cool and it refreshes your whole body. Well I think the gospel tonic is like that, just sit back and relax today; at least for a moment and think I'm not defined by what I do. I'm defined by Jesus. It's by grace you've been saved. You see our works don't say who we are. We can have a successful day in Jesus and have nothing to show for it at the end. Yes, of course God wants us to be fruitful, but he also talks about rest in the Bible, He's very big on rest.

So the gospel tonic that I want to offer us today is that we should be enjoying grace, and not defining ourselves by our output. So while we've got lots of time at home and things, go easy on yourself; define yourself by grace.