Writing With Grace

  I recently sat down with my friend Zach Roberts for his podcast, and we ended up talking about the real reason I wrote The Visual Gospel:  A 30-Day Devotional Exploring the Good News of Jesus . I shared the moment that started the whole project: even with seminary degrees and years of pastoring, I would sometimes hit a word like “propitiation” and have to stop and think, “Which one is that again?” It struck me that if I struggled to recall it, most people sitting in church probably did too. An Einstein line kept coming back to me “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough" and that became the heart of the book. I wanted simple pictures that would make these essential gospel words stick. On the episode I walk through a couple of those pictures. One is the lightning rod shaped like a cross for propitiation, Jesus absorbing the wrath we deserved. Another is the father running to embrace the prodigal for the word “love.” I also told the story of testing...