At least twice in the past year, I've been late for a meeting or an appointment and haven't been able to find my car keys. Certain that either my wife or one of my children had misplaced them, I've frantically run from room to room assigning blame. "Who was playing with my keys? I put them right here on the counter and now they're gone. They didn't just vanish into thin air! Who picked them up? Where are they? I'm late." And right when I'm about ready to order mass executions, I walk into my bedroom one last time to look (huffing and puffing, moaning and groaning), put my hand in my pocket, and find my keys. They'd been there the whole time.
Every time I tell that story, people laugh. And rightfully so. Who frantically looks for car keys that are in his pocket? Me. That's who.

The truth is, we all typically live this way: frantically and frustratingly searching for something we already have. The gospel is God's good news announcement that everything we need we already possess in Christ. Because of Jesus' finished work, Christians already have all of the justification, approval, significance, security, freedom, validation, love, righteousness, and rescue that we desperately long for, and look for in a thousand things infinitely smaller than Jesus …. [Unfortunately], we allow our internal voice, one that constantly says, "Do this and live," to drown out the external voice that shouts, "It is finished!"