DISCOVERING JESUS

When we look around us at the broken world we live in, we see pain, illness, despair. People are lonely and seeking identity and purpose. Fear, guilt and anxiety surround us. You might be asking, what hope does Jesus offer? People talk about the Good News of Jesus, but what is the Good News?

When God created the world, He made it perfect and His desire was to have a perfect relationship with us. However, it all went wrong when Adam and Eve chose to go against God and everything changed. The perfect world was now broken and so was our perfect relationship with God.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God loves you immeasurably and couldn’t leave you in this broken world and broken relationship without Him. So He put into action His rescue plan. That plan was sending Jesus, His precious only son, to live a perfect life, free from any wrongdoing. Jesus lived a perfect life, taught people about God and healed many. The leaders and authorities did not like what Jesus was teaching, so they killed him on a cross. At that moment, when Jesus died, He took the punishment for everything we have done wrong.

Jesus didn’t stay dead! Three days after He was killed on the cross, God raised Him from the dead and now He is alive in Heaven, praying for us! Because He took the punishment on the cross for everything we have done wrong, that leaves us free to have a perfect relationship with God - just as He had always intended. It means when we say sorry to God for the wrong things we have done and put our trust in Jesus, God forgives us. It's like God takes a messy whiteboard and wipes it all clean. All our mistakes, all the things we’ve done and said that we shouldn’t have done, all our guilt and shame is wiped clean and God sees us like His perfect son, Jesus - spotless. This means that God’s original plan of having a perfect relationship with us is now available to us. We don’t deserve it and we can’t do anything to earn it. It’s a free gift to us from God, our Heavenly Father. We just need to accept it.

When we accept the free gift of forgiveness, God sends the Holy Spirit - His own presence to come and fill us. The role of the Holy Spirit is to love us, guide us, comfort us, and shape us to be more like Jesus. To be His hands and feet to the world around us and to point others to Jesus. There is no better way to live our lives, than to live it like we were originally created - to have a perfect relationship with God the Father, made possible through Jesus, His Son. That’s the Good News of Jesus.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9