Welcome to Day 2211 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Wisdom Nuggets – What Does God Want? – What is the Gospel? – Daily Wisdom Putnam Church Message – 03/05/2023 What Does God Want? -  What is the Gospel? Last week, we finished our story narrative overview of the Bible, answering the question: What does God want? The answer we discovered over the past six weeks was that God wants you and everyone who will ever live. In other words, God wanted a human family. God wants co-workers to take care of His creation. God wants you to know/ who you are/ and why your life has value to him. /He loves you /and desires that you also love Him. So now we switch our focus on what is required to be part of God’s forever family /and how we show this transformation in our lives./ The answer to these two questions is through believing loyalty. This week, we will explore the believing aspect; in the next two weeks, we will focus on loyalty. We invested a year in a detailed study of the Good News, according to John, but today, we will view an overall snapshot of the Good News. It is simple and yet very profound. What is the Gospel, the Good News?   It may sound odd to ask that question at this juncture. We’ve just invested six weeks walking through the story of the Bible, the story of how God wants us in his family. We join that family by believing the gospel.   I’ve discovered that many people who attend church don’t fully understand the gospel. Some can’t articulate it. Others who can express it coherently often struggle with truly surrendering to its simplicity. They suffer inside over genuinely believing /that the gospel is all that is necessary for everlasting life. Some of you may wonder what I’m talking about. There is a good chance that as I explain what I mean, you’ll either see yourself or someone you know in what follows.   We’ll start by defining the gospel. Then, I’ll ask some questions along the way that are important to consider for clarity. We also need to talk about what the gospel isn’t. When we get to that part of the conversation, you’ll see what I mean by the struggle I mentioned.   What is The Gospel? It’s relatively easy to define what the term “gospel” means. The biblical word “gospel” refers to the message of salvation. The English word “gospel” is a translation of a Greek word (the original language of the New Testament) that referred to a reward given to someone who brought good news. Hence, you’ll often hear the term “gospel” equated with “good news”—the good news about the message of salvation.   Let’s think about that. It might feel like we learned something. I suppose we did, but we didn’t understand what we needed to know. It’s nice that we can now define a term. But we haven’t said anything about the content of the message of salvation. We’ve explained what the word “gospel” means, but not what the gospel is. So, let’s talk about what the gospel means. What is the content of God’s offer of