I wanted to give you a few things that I pray will help you
to love Jesus more ("love much" as it said in Luke
7:36-50).

The first thing I wanted to do is repeat for you
something I learned from Dick Kauffman at Harbor Presbyterian in
San Diego.  He does a simple Gospel meditation every morning.  He
starts with meditating on his many sins for 5 minutes.  During this time he
focuses on how his sins are personally offensive to God, that it
would be impossible for him to repay God for them and apart from the Gospel he
would certainly be eternally condemned.  After that he spends 5
minutes meditating on the cross, how each individual sin was completely
removed by Jesus suffering and death and that he is completely
forgiven.  Then he spends 5 minutes contemplating Jesus’ resurrection
and his own spiritual resurrection to newness of life.  In this way he
spends 15 minutes or so a day meditating on the Gospel.  Whenever I have
taken up this habit, it has been great for my soul.  Perhaps you will find
it helpful too.

Secondly, I wanted to recommend that you read and
ponder The Centrality of the Gospel (free PDF) by Tim
Keller.  In it Keller says, "All our problems come from a failure to
apply the gospel" and I couldn’t agree more.  This paper is
a great help in applying the Gospel to all of life.  You would
greatly benefit from reading it and then discussing it with your spouse or other friend over food or coffee.

Lastly, I wanted you to consider the analogy of bankruptcy
and how it relates to the Gospel so I posted
it on the Kaleo site, check it out. 

Oh, and here is a
great quote about taking another look at the cross.

I hope you all find time this week to linger in prayer at
the feet of him who was pierced for your many sins.

Grace and Peace,
Erick