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• Illustration: May compares many peoples’ experience with Christianity to the story of an in-home sales pitch—the price seems unbelievably low going in, and becomes unbelievably high before the process is through.
• The more rules they follow it seems like the more rules there are.
• There’s no denying that when you become a Christian, God’s expectations for you are incredibly high—he wants you to become perfect, like Jesus.
• Becoming like Christ is a life-long process that is accomplished not by your power, but by his power at work within you.
• Colossians 2:6-7
• Big Idea: We are saved by faith, and we live by faith.

• Illustration: May uses the set-in ways of Jed from The Beverly Hillbillies to define what it means to be “rooted” in something.
• Your roots determine your values and priorities, therefore to be “rooted in him” means that we allow Christ to determine our values and priorities.
• If you want to establish stability in your Christian life, you must learn to live “in” Christ, not just “for” Christ.
• You become rooted in Christ by surrendering yourself in faith to Christ; the more you surrender, the deeper the roots grow.

• Being “built up in Christ” is an on-going process—one that takes time.
• 1 Corinthians 3:9
• Philippians 1:6
• Being built up in him requires that you surrender yourself to him and allow him to do his work in you.
• Living in Christ means that our relationship with him is based on faith in his promise to make us holy, and not on our own failures and successes.

• Illustration: May cites Popeye as an example of someone whose strength doesn’t come from himself, but something else (in this case, spinach).
• You don’t have any strength in yourself; the strength is in your faith.
• Christ is your source of strength, and your faith in him is the key that unlocks God’s power in your life.
• Your focus should not be on whether you will do good deeds or bad deeds throughout the day; your focus should be on placing your faith entirely in Christ, and relying on him to give you the strength to do what you must do.

• Illustration: May tells the story of thanking a friend who had promised a gift before the gift even arrived as a parallel to thanking God even before we fully appreciate his blessings.
• Expressing thankfulness in advance is an act of faith—it means that you are trusting in him and not yourself.

• If it seems impossible for you to establish any kind of stability in your walk with Christ, it could be that you are placing your faith in the wrong person.
• You must do the same thing today that you did the day you were saved: put your faith entirely in Christ.
• Living the Christian life is not about living for Christ, it’s about living in Christ.
• We are saved by faith; we live by faith.