As I was leaving a recent AA meeting, a young lady stopped me and asked, “What caused you to change your thinking from a nonbeliever to a believer in Jesus Christ?” She went on to tell me that she and her husband believed in God (of “some sort”, her words), but they both struggled with the idea of Jesus. Their stumbling block was, “how could any rational, intelligent person accept a story that sounds so much like a fairy tale? Is Jesus really such a “big deal.”
Wow! I totally understood that question because there was a time when I struggled with the same issues. But the fact is…today I realize that at that time in my life I was knee deep in ignorance. Not ignorance in terms of stupidity, but ignorance of “the” truth. My transformation followed the path of the Jesus’ directive to his Apostles found in John 8:32: “…if you follow my teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
For the first half century of my life, I was a devotee to the gospel of Presgrave. I considered myself an intelligent guy; I was self-sufficient and life was good. But, as is usually the case with the proud and arrogant, at some point we come face to face with our own insufficiency, usually when we discover that our plan has taken us places we never have intended to go. That was true in my life. So in my state of brokenness I cried out, “God help me”, and the God that I thought had abandoned me because of my unworthiness wrapped his arms around me and said, “Welcome home! I’ve been waiting for you…what took you so long?”
But back to the opening question. I told the young lady I believed that if any rational, intelligent person would open the Bible to the Book of Matthew and started reading, and if they connected the dots along the way, they could not come to any conclusion other than ‘ Jesus is not only a big deal; Jesus is the ONLY deal’ But I also suggested that before she and her husband continued to wrestle with the truth of Jesus Christ, they should first get clarity in their own mind about God. I believe that unless they understand that God is Love and he wants a relationship with them – an eternal relationship, they’ll have a hard time grasping the significance of Jesus or why he had to come into the world.
I am reminded of Apostle Paul’s visit to Athens. As he was walking throughout the city he was troubled by all the idols he saw on display. But he noticed one that had the inscription “to an unknown god”. When he later met and debated the philosophers, he told them: “…I was walking along and I saw your many alters. One of them had this inscription on it, ‘to an unknown god’. You have been worshiping him without knowing who he is, but now I wish to tell you about him.” (Acts 17:23) The undeniable message here is we all must have a clear conception of our God. How can we trust him if we don’t know what he says; what he says about us; how he thinks; what his standard is; what his promises are, and how we can achieve those promises.
There are two foundational principles from which everything else written in the Bible springs. The first: God is love. The second: God wants a relationship with us – an eternal relationship. If these two principles are not stated this clearly and succinctly on every page of the Holy Bible, they are interwoven in the scripture. But even before the issue of an eternal relationship between God and man can be considered, the issue of sin had to be resolved. Why? Because sin contaminates, spreads, kills and destroys. If you doubt that, just look at the world around you. Does this look like paradise? And remember, when God created the world and man, he proclaimed both to be good. Therefore, the anger, hatred, lying, poverty, sickness, suffering, disease and even death were not part of God’s creation. All of that ugliness is a result of sin entering the world.
The severity of the sin- issue is revealed in 1Peter 1:16:“…we have to be holy because God is holy.” (holy meaning to be sin-free: to be set aside for sacred use) In other words, we cannot come into the presence of God if we are stained with sin. But because God is Love, and because he knows our human frailty, his plan was always to provide a Savior to do for us what he knew we could not do for ourselves. Romans 3:21-22 tells us: “But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight – not by obeying the law but by the way promised in Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins, and we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.” Romans 5:6 also states, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” The author doesn’t elaborate on what constitutes “just the right time”, but I believe we can derive a clue from being “utterly helpless.”
Once we come to understand that God is Love and how much he loves us, we can begin to see how vitally important Jesus is in his plan for our salvation. Our only other route to eternal life is to live a sin-free life through our own effort, and in reality there is no chance of that happening. That’s why Jesus told us, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) This is also why Jesus is not only a big-deal, but the ONLY deal!
God’s promise to us is if we seek him we will find him. If we knock the door will be opened. The amazing truth is, God meets us wherever we are in our journey. If we abide in Him, he’ll abide in us. It all begins with our willingness to restore the original relationship that was damaged by the fall of man, but once we do it, we are wrapped in His arms. And just as I experienced, he is waiting with open arms to welcome us home.
My question to you today is, “Is Jesus Lord of your life?” Is he really a big deal?
Feel free to respond to this message, and please “like” it and share it with other social media friends.
May God Bless Ya…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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