We don’t need superficial religion.
We need supernatural regeneration.
We’re dead in sin, and we need to be born again.
We need a new heart.

We have this idea of salvation, as getting out of the line going to hell, and getting in the line to go into heaven, and we’d really kind of rather be enjoying those things over there, but we’re going to do this over here to save our skin. That’s not salvation.

SALVATION
is a
revolutionary new taste capacity
where you realize that the world doesn’t satisfy,
and Christ does,
and you drink from His water,
and you eat from His bread,
and you say,
“Why would I go back to that?
I’ve got CHRIST! And a new heart!”

We don’t conquer sin by working hard to change our deeds. We conquer sin by trusting Christ to change our desires, and He gives us a new heart. He satisfies the thirst of our soul, and when He does, He breaks the power of desire for sin.

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.”
C.S. Lewis

Regeneration. It’s like you’ve been wandering in a desert, and you’re looking for water in all these different places: relationships, money, greed, success, approval. We’re looking, and then, regeneration is when we realize that the water is found in Christ, and we drink, and we drink deeply. We come to Him.
He’s bread from heaven. Living water.

–David Platt
Secret Church # 10, Crucifixion, Salvation, and the Glory of God
www.secretchurch.org