My job as a project manager, I am from time to time called upon to do something called a gap analysis. Have you ever heard of a gap analysis? Okay, a couple of you. For instance, recently I was charged with seeking out a reporting tool for the executives of my organization. And so first we determined the needs. through interviews and actually we went out and got information about this particular space and what was available and so forth. And we determined our needs that software needed to be able to do A, B, and C, and it needed to be able to do X, Y, and Z. And we documented all of that. And then we evaluated how well certain software packages could meet those needs. And of course, we evaluated This software, it could do A and B, but it couldn't do Z. And then this software package could do B and C, but it couldn't do X. And of course, that gap between what the software needs to do and what it, in fact, can do is very important in choosing the right package. And of course, you're looking for the software that's got the smallest gap. So now you know what a gap analysis is, and you're all while on your way to becoming project managers. In reality, I think most of us are familiar with this concept of a gap analysis because I think most of us here this morning have performed a gap analysis on our own spiritual lives. Sprinkled throughout the Bible, there are descriptions, even promises for what life can look like for people who follow the Lord Jesus Christ. And these descriptions are often quite extraordinary. And yet they are presented as things that we really ought to expect. That we really ought to think are possible for ordinary people like us who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. For instance, John 10.10. Christ there says, I've come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. Most of us memorize that verse. In Galatians 5, Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit that is to be a part of all of our lives as love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I mean, we can turn to almost any book in the New Testament and find this picture of amazing life that is offered to us if we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give you another example. 1 Peter 1.8 says, though now you do not see Jesus, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory." Now, how many of us today can say, yes, that's me, I'm living life more abundantly right now. The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, that's in my life every day. I'm rejoicing with joy inexpressible and full of glory. People comment on that in my life. Really? Is that you? Is that me? Or is there a gap? See, let me tell you what I think happens in the average Christian life. It goes something like this. People hear this amazing message of what Jesus Christ offers, and it's extraordinary. It's overwhelming, this vision, the power of it, the beauty of it. And we're drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ, and we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He forgives our sins. And for a time, there's kind of like a spiritual honeymoon. Our love for Christ is overwhelming during this time, and we want to tell everybody we can find about Jesus Christ, and we're drawn to the Word of God. And we may even, during this period, we become involved in a church, we become involved in service. And maybe certain habits in our lives we put aside, we clean up our language, we quit smoking or drinking, and all kinds of things like this. But then over a period of years, this sense of progress, this sense of growth comes to a standstill. And instead of our lives looking like this amazing picture that I've just described to you, they look like a whole lot less. And we begin to sense this gap between what the New Testament says and the reality of our Christian lives. I think most of us here this morning who have been saved for many years, in our hearts, whether we would say it out loud or not, we have to admit, yes, there's a gap. There's a gap between this vision, this promise, this description I find in the New Testament and the life that I'm living. And the question that I want to address to all of us this morning is this. What do we do about that gap? What do Christians do over time to try to close this gap? To try to recapture that vision? And I would like to suggest to you that most of us try to deal with this gap in our lives by using one or more self-made strategies. And let me suggest to you several of those strategies that I think we as Christians employ to try to close this gap in our lives. First, some people when faced with this gap simply pretend. Like it's not really there. There's no gap in my life. They know what the Bible says. They know what their lives should look like. And so they just fake it. Yeah, that's me. You know, when you talk to people like this, it's kind of a weird experience, you know, because Their life is a miracle a minute. And, you know, the Lord is leading in everything right down to the parking spot that they get, you know, when they go grocery shopping. I mean, you know, it's just the Lord answers every prayer. They smile a lot and every sentence, you know, ends with praise the Lord. But often, this is the kind of person who cares a lot more about what people think than anything else. And so, at all costs, this kind of person has to be perceived as spiritual. And oftentimes, the happy face is masking depression or secret sin, but that's not what matters to this kind of a person as long as everybody he sees thinks that he's bridged the gap. I heard one Christian mother who put it this way to her son, fake happiness is better than genuine depression. We live in a subculture, folks, where it's easy to learn to pretend. The Word of God teaches us that we're supposed to be transparent with one another. that we're supposed to confess our faults one to another so we can pray one for another. And yet, so often what really happens in church is that we learn to be anything but transparent. No matter what's really happening in my life, I have to make sure that I keep my testimony in place. And that's the catch word here. I want to make sure that my testimony doesn't, you know, fall off. Because then you might actually see me and you might actually know that there's this gap in my life and that I'm struggling like you are. And so I need to keep that testimony in place. Other people deal with this gap by continually rededicating their lives to the Lord. Over and over again. This happens particularly in churches where there's an altar call at the end of each service. And I don't disparage churches like that. I mean, some of the churches in which I've served, we regularly had our altar calls at the end of services. But what's easy to happen in that kind of a church is that folks try to recapture this honeymoon period in their Christian experience. They try to recapture that first love by a kind of serial conversion. They try to bridge the gap with a cycle of decisions made in the grip of emotion at the end of this service or that service. In fact, some pastors actually encourage this kind of thing. And I'm very well aware of this strategy because I used it personally as a kid. You know, every summer as a kid I would go to camp. Yeah, I see some smiles here. You know, and every Thursday of camp week you have the campfire, okay? And there's a big message, and it's an emotional service, and they call for Christian kids to rededicate. And I did it every summer. I mean, every summer I rededicated my life. And I would go home, and it would change things for about three days. And then I was right back to the gap. And then I think many Christians in evangelical circles deal with this gap by turning to the next big thing. All right, everybody put up your hands. You've got to do the quotation marks. The next big thing. You've got to say it with me. The next big thing. Now, when I was a kid, the next big thing was the Bill Gothard seminars. And everybody back in the 70s went to the Bill Gothard seminars. And we took what Mr. Gothard had to say as 150% truth because we believed that somehow if we followed what he said, we were going to bridge the gap. How many of you here have Bill Gothard seminar books on your shelves? Come on, let me see your hands. Yeah, see, these are the old people. You know, for some back in the 60s and 70s, the next big thing was the charismatic movement, you know. Speaking in tongues, that was the next big thing back then. And a lot of mainstream churches, there were people in those churches that tried it. And they believed that this was the next big thing. It would help them bridge the gap. I had a roommate back at BJU back in the 70s who bought into the tongues and the healing is the next big thing. And I think eventually he ended up really disillusioned with the whole Christian thing. Because here's the problem. The next big thing always ends in disillusionment. It doesn't end up bridging the gap. And so then we look for the next, next big thing. And there have been other next big things. I've talked a lot about the 70s because that's when I, you know, was a kid and I saw a lot of this. But there have been other next big things since then. And all you have to do is go down to your local Christian bookstore and walk in and look at the people prowling in the aisles. And you know what they're looking for, a lot of them? Say it with me. The next big thing. They're just certain that there's some book or there's some seminar. There is something that is going to enable me to bridge this gap. It might have 12 steps. It might have three steps. Maybe it's got phases instead of steps, but there's something there that's going to help me bridge this gap. And then there's finally the strategy that can be summed up in these words. I've just got to try harder. I've just got to try harder. My efforts, I'm just not heroic enough in my efforts to live the Christian life. And it seems to me that particularly in our circles, fundamental circles, very conservative evangelical circles. It seems to me this is the standard answer. You know, I see it in my life, I see it in the lives of many of you. Our idea is that we're going to close this gap just by sheer spiritual elbow grease. I'll get up earlier, I'll pray longer, I'll read another book, I'll get involved in another Bible study, I'll serve more, I'll read more Scripture. I heard somebody give their testimony the other day. I'm getting up at four o'clock in the morning. You know, we read books like the books by E.M. Bounds on prayer, you know, books that that describe individuals like Martin Luther. You know, Martin Luther said he was too busy to spend less than four hours a day in prayer. And we think, wow, maybe I better start getting up at four o'clock. So we determined we're going to get up at four a.m. and pray, even though we're not morning people, even though we have a great difficulty of putting nouns and verbs together at four in the morning. Even though we're not really fit to speak to anyone at four in the morning, let alone God Almighty. But we say to ourselves, this is hard and it's exhausting, so it must be spiritually beneficial. I mean, what are we, monks? And so we keep that up for a few days or maybe a few weeks, maybe even a few months. But beyond that, the vast majority of us cannot sustain it. And so we stop. And then when we stop, we really feel guilty. And sooner or later, that guilt gets to us. And so what do we do? We start all over again. We start some other heroic effort and bridge that gap. Some of you here know exactly what I'm talking about. Because this cycle happens in your life over and over and over again. And your secret, our secret, in circles like ours, the dirty little secret, is that we're getting very, very tired. Not just physically tired. Spiritually tired ready to give up. I can't seem to close this gap no matter what I do no matter how hard I try I Believe that we're in this situation where we're trying these bogus strategies of our own To bridge this gap because we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Christian life And in the time remaining this morning, I'm going to do my best, with the Holy Spirit's help, to address this misunderstanding. What I want us to go away today understanding is God's strategy for bridging this gap. Take your Bibles with me, please, and turn with me to Galatians chapter 3. Galatians 3, I'll read the first three verses. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit? Are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" Now, in the first five verses here of Galatians 3, Paul is painting a contrast. He's implying here that there are two different approaches to God. On the one hand, there are words like these, works, law, flesh. On the other hand, there are words like these, faith, hearing, spirit. You see that contrast? I've spelled it out for you in a little chart there in your outline. Try to make that clear. And then Paul applies these two contrasts to two different stages in our lives, in our relationship with God. First, how do you have a right relationship with God to begin with? I mean, how does that relationship with God begin? Which side of the contrast provides the answer to that? Do we begin a right relationship with God by works, law, and flesh, or by faith, hearing, and the Spirit? Which one? Anybody think that you begin a right relationship with God by works, and law, and flesh? Anybody willing to vote for that? How many of you say, no, no, you begin a right relationship with God by faith and hearing the gospel and the work of the spirit? How many of you say that's how you begin? Come on. You got to vote. You didn't vote for the others. You got to vote here. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to stretch. Come on. OK, good. I mean, none of us are unclear on the answer to that question. We know that the Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's a gap. A gap between our sinful lives and the holy standard of God. And we know that the only way to bridge that gap is through the work of Jesus Christ. We can't do it in the strength of our human flesh. The only way we can do it is by hearing the Gospel, trusting Jesus Christ, and through the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing us to salvation, right? We got that. Or let me put it in a little bit different words there. I don't know if I put it in a box or exactly where. These words don't come from Galatians 3. They come instead from the book of Ephesians. And you've heard these before. I emphasize them all the time. We're saved by grace through faith. Same thing. But here in Galatians chapter 3, Paul then goes on to deal with a second stage in our relationship with God. Paul was concerned with these Galatians. They were already Christians. They were already in the church. He was very concerned about how they were trying to live the Christian life. And so he asks at the end of verse 3, Are you now being made perfect by the flesh? That word, made perfect, has the idea of coming to the right conclusion, of reaching the goal. So Paul was saying, do you think that you're going to make progress in the Christian life and reach the right goal by works? and law and flesh? Are you going to reach the right conclusion to the Christian life? Are you going to hit the goal in the Christian life by faith and hearing and spirit? Which one? Come on, we're going to vote again. How many of you think that you reach the right goal in the Christian life, that you're going to progress toward that goal by works and law and flesh? How many of you believe that you're going to make progress in the Christian life toward the right goal by faith and by hearing the Gospel and through the work of the Spirit? Come on. That's another opportunity to stretch. Okay, again. Now, I led you to that conclusion. But here's the problem. When it comes to closing that gap We don't act like we believe what we just said. I mean, all of those strategies that I talked about, they're over here, folks. They're works and they're laws of a sort. And they're elbow grease. That's my flesh saying, I'm going to do this. So let me shout it from the rooftops. We are saved by grace through faith and we live the Christian life successfully, say it with me, by grace through faith. Or let me put it in another way. If the Holy Spirit had not been at work in my life at the moment of my salvation, I never would have been saved. The Holy Spirit is the author of the new birth. And folks, if the Holy Spirit is not at work in my life right now, then I won't make any progress in the Christian life. But you know what? If you belong to Jesus Christ this morning, the Holy Spirit is at work in your life and mine by grace through faith. He's there. He desires to work in you and in me and to take us to heights that we've only glimpsed right now. But He only works by grace through faith. Now, let me try to make that a little bit clearer. Let's look at a different passage, okay? Turn over with me to John chapter 7. Because I think I think one of the reasons why we so often are confused here is because we don't have the right mental picture in our minds, in our hearts, of what it means to live the Christian life. So one of the things I'm trying to do this morning is to give us the right mental picture. I don't have you play golf. I know Dave plays golf. But this is true in a lot of different sports, you know. They teach you to picture what you're about to do. You're supposed to picture the putt going into the hole. You're supposed to picture your swing. The batter's supposed to picture hitting that ball. You're supposed to visualize it. You're supposed to have that picture of success. That's what I'm going to give you this morning. That picture, that vision of spiritual success. what it means to make tracks toward closing this gap. OK, let's read together. John 7, 37 through 39. On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Now what does Jesus promise here? He's promising the Holy Spirit to every believer. But how did Jesus picture the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives? What's the picture here? He pictures him as this river of water gushing out of the core of our being. Get that picture in your mind. I want you to notice very carefully that Jesus does not picture the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives like a lake, or a pond, or a wadi. How many of you know what a wadi is? Now, there's a reason that I say this, because when Jesus said these words, they evoked something different in the people that were listening to him, because they lived in a land where there weren't rivers and streams. I mean, I have a stream running through my backyard. constantly. It's a constant flow. It never runs dry. Even in the deepest drought that we've had here in South Carolina, it has never run dry. It's not like that in Palestine. In Palestine, they have wadis. I'll never forget when we flew over Haiti. I mean, this is one of the most memorable experiences. I didn't expect this, that when I went to Haiti, that one of the most memorable experiences of my life was going to be flying over that country. So with my son Justin, we're flying in this little plane and looking down, and everywhere over the surface of Haiti, you could see wadis. You could see these dry gulches that when it finally rained there, would fill up with water. What Jesus was saying to these Jews who heard Him, because the land of Judea is very much like Haiti would be. He's saying, the Holy Spirit in your life is not like one of these wadis that runs with water, you know, a few months out of the year, but the rest of the time it's bone dry. The Holy Spirit in your life and mine is like a rushing river of water that's constantly flowing. Let that sink in. The Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life and mine flows at all times in your life and mine. The New Testament pictures grace in the same way. Turn with me to one of my favorite passages. You've heard me preach this before. I think I mentioned it just last Sunday. Turn over with me to John chapter 1. John chapter 1. I'm going to read verses 14 and 16. I'm going to skip verse 15 because verse 15 here is actually a parenthetical. And the Word, that's Jesus, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So here's the Lord Jesus. He's full of grace and truth. And then verse 16 goes on to say, And of His fullness we, His people, have all received and grace for grace. Grace for grace. You know, I love that phrase. Those of us who belong to Jesus, who have trusted Him for salvation, we receive from Jesus grace in place of grace, grace on top of grace, grace flowing, ever flowing from His fullness. Now, I need to make sure that we understand grace, okay? We sing about grace all the time, but Oftentimes, when we sing about grace, we're talking about grace and salvation. And grace and salvation is what I need at the point of salvation. And at the point of salvation, what I need from the Lord is I need forgiveness, and I need justification, and I need redemption, and I need adoption into His family, and I need all of these things. And all of that is what grace gives me at the point of salvation. But when I'm a believer, grace has a little bit different flavor. What do I need from God in my Christian life? I already defined for you very clearly what we need. We need to close that gap, don't we? And grace is the enabling, the strength, the power to close that gap, to live that life that's described in the New Testament. And Jesus says, of my fullness you've received, and grace for grace, what do you need in order to live for me? What do you need in order to live that abundant life? What do you need in order to bear the fruit of the Spirit? That's yours. And it flows from His fullness constantly, continually. Grace in place of grace. We saw the illustration of it last Sunday in the widow at Zarephath. She'd use up that little bit of flour and that little bit of oil and the next day it would be there again. It's the same thing. It's the same idea. Or let me use an illustration that to me really clinched it. When I was 7, 8, 10, I'm not sure exactly how old, but my parents began to take us to the beach for our vacations. I'd never been. to the ocean before I was that age. I began to go to the beach every summer. I've loved the beach ever since then. One of the things that we would do, my dad taught my sister and I how to body surf. Now, when you're a kid, you can't really body surf. You know, when you try to body surf as a kid, you do this. So, you have to have a raft, and my dad would rent these inflatable rafts, and he would teach us exactly where we needed to stand so we could catch the wave And, you know, we learn to catch the wave. I've taught that to my kids. Some of them still like to do it. Some of them don't. Some think that there are sharks in the ocean and that they ought not go there. That one's not here today. Do you know the great thing about catching waves? If you miss one, there's always another one coming. That's the picture of the Holy Spirit's ministry, if we would just get a hold of it. You know, when my dad taught us how to body surf, He didn't teach us how to create waves. And you know what? I think that's how a lot of us think we need to live the Christian life. I need to be creating waves somehow. God doesn't expect us to create waves. He says, I'll send the waves. I'll send the rushing river. I'll send the grace in place of grace. You just have to catch the wave. I repeat, I think oftentimes we have a fundamental misconception of what it means to live the Christian life. We're not trying to live by grace through faith. We're trying to create ways. Jesus Christ said, you better go out and build my church. Is that what he said? Is that what he said? No, he said, I will build my church. And He invited us to be His co-workers. And yet so often as we approach what we do here at Midway Bible Church, we approach it as, well, somehow I've got to move this church forward and put my shoulder to the wheel and get it to move an inch and it's all up to me and it's up to my efforts. No. Christ says, I will build my church if you would like to be involved, come take my hand, but I'm going to build the church." Do you not see how different a picture that is to how often we conceive of what this is about? Now, I'm not really telling us that we're supposed to do anything that different. I mean, should we continue to pray? Yes. Should we continue to read God's Word? Yes. Should we continue to serve here at Midway Bible Church? Yes. The difference is the why. What am I trying to do when I read God's Word? What am I trying to do when I pray? What am I trying to do when I serve? What am I trying to do when I give out the gospel? All I'm trying to do is catch the wave. All I'm trying to do is to step into that river that Jesus promised was flowing out of my heart. So we don't conceive of the Christian life in that way. We have got it all wrong. How many of you, I'm going to give you an opportunity again to stretch this morning. How many of you this morning turned on a spigot? Was it tough? Was it a hard thing to do? See, that water was there. That water pressure was there. It was just ready to gush and all I had to do was turn on the spigot. When I pray, all I'm doing is turning on the spigot. Is that tough? Is that difficult? Is that hard? I go to God's Word and I read God's Word. All I'm doing is turning on the spigot. All I'm doing is catching the wave. All I'm doing is stepping into the flow of that river. All I'm doing is exercising just a little bit of faith. Maybe maybe the best way to illustrate this. is to think about why we confess sin. Our worship this morning was about the confession of sin. Why do we confess sin? Well, one reason, I told you this morning, is because our sin grieves God. And we need to deal with that. We need to be reconciled to our Father so He can be glad in us again. There's another reason why we need to confess sin. I talked about it this morning. Sin clogs the spigot. You know, we can look at sin in our lives, and John emphasized, you know, we need to keep short accounts. Well, here's why we need to keep short accounts. When we sin, what we are in essence doing is stepping out of the flow of the river. When we sin, we are in essence walking into the beach out of the ocean. When we sin, we are in essence turning off the spigot. You want to know why so often we sense this gap in our lives and we seem to be making such little progress? It's exactly what John talked about. We're not keeping short accounts. I mean, we have this weird idea, you know, that I sin and I need to kind of put that sin into my sin savings account. And I keep putting sins into my sin savings account. Because tomorrow morning when I have my devotions, I'm a spiritual person after all. Tomorrow morning when I have my devotions, then I can bring my bank book to God and we can work things out. And how we think about it, is that not because, you know, some pastor said, you've got to learn how to confess sin. And we've got it all wrong. The moment we sin, the moment God's Holy Spirit says, you have grieved and quenched me, you have stepped out of the flow of that river, you have walked into the beach out of the waves, you have turned off the spigot, at that very moment we need to say, Lord God, forgive me. And then, and here's the worst part of it, so often, You know, we have this sin savings account and we bring it back to God and we come back and we say, oh no God, I've blown it big time, look at all of this stuff I did yesterday and you really need to forgive me and I hope, I really hope that I can get in good enough with you again that you'll bless me like you did that one day last month. Isn't that how we feel? When what we need to be doing is saying, at the moment the Holy Spirit says, you've sinned, is to say, Lord, I turn back from this. And then we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. And we need to say, I can be forgiven. Not because I do something or to get back into God's good graces somehow, so that God's going to bless me again. Listen, God doesn't have any reason ever to bless me again. There's never enough reason for God to bless you or me. He ought to send every one of us to hell right now! The only reason He ever has to bless us is Jesus Christ. And so I come back to Him, and I preach the Gospel to myself and say, Lord, forgive me, and I'm claiming that grace that's in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm stepping back into the river! And I'm stepping back out into that ocean and I'm going to catch this wave right now. I'm not waiting until tomorrow morning. No, sir. I'm catching the next wave. What did I tell you the wonderful thing is about the waves? I might have missed the last two or three, but I'm not going to miss the next one. I'm going to get back in the waves. The Holy Spirit is going to start carrying me again. God's grace is going to start gushing in my life again just as soon as I can. That's what it means to live a spiritual life. And I don't know about you, but I think most of us have missed it. Because that's not how we're living. And there will always be a gap if we're not living that way. Now, there may be one more question on your mind, and you may say, well, preacher, if you live like that, does it feel any different? You know, we're such touchy-feely people in our culture today. It's all about feelings. And so, so often, part of what inhibits us from living this is that we think we ought to feel different. We're saved by grace through faith, we live the Christian life by grace through faith is a whole lot different than feeling. And so often the reason that we don't live like we ought to is we're looking for this feeling. We're saying, Lord, I'm going to jump back in the river. I want that flow again. I'm going to catch the next wave. And we look at our feelings and our feeling, we don't really feel any different. Well, I guess that didn't work. This isn't about feelings, folks. This is an act of faith. Think about it. Think about when you were saved. Do you have this huge emotional experience when you were saved? Some people do. Some people don't. It's not about the feeling. Now, sooner or later, if you were saved, you'll have some good feelings. I don't know when it'll come. It might come at the beginning. It might come later. Good feelings normally come to a saved person at some point. It's no different when we live the Christian life by faith. Are we going to feel it then? I don't know. It's not about the feelings. But I guarantee you this, you catch that wave, and I've caught waves. me a good feeling at some point. But a lot of times it's not right at the point where I'm catching the wave. And it's not about the feelings. It's an act of faith. So often at the end of these services, I invite you to begin the Christian life by grace through faith. If there's someone like that here this morning, you've never trusted Jesus Christ, you've never put your faith in Him, I want to talk to you. But my message this morning is for all of us that we live the Christian life by grace through faith. That we begin to use God's strategy for bridging the gap that's found so often in our lives. Could I have every head bowed? Please, every eye closed.