have you met?
Here, by way of brief introduction, is the backstory of history with a personal invitation: This is also your story. . .
God created humanity on
purpose—to know Him and to enjoy the fullness of all He is.
He placed the first man
and woman in a beautiful garden, from which they could expand and steward and
rule over everything else God had made. It was perfect. He had given humans noble
position over His creation. But equally amazing was their position of
friendship with Himself.
God knows friendship
never happens by force. He didn’t want us to love Him because we had to.
He’s better than that. He planted one tree in the garden that would be
off-limits for food. By offering a choice to obey or disobey, God granted
humans dignity, responsibility, and accountability.
He loved us. The choice
to love Him back would be ours.
That’s where a fallen
angel in the form of a serpent saw his opportunity to carry out a personal
vendetta against God.
Satan tempted the man
and woman to eat from the tree anyway. They did. And we’ve been broken ever
since. Every one of us born after that has been born twisted away from God.
We lost the garden.
Lost our dignity. Lost our respect for each other. Lost our friendship with
God.
It wasn’t that He
stopped loving us. It’s that He never stopped being Himself. He is just. Sin
has consequences.
But in that harrowing
moment of our spiritual death, He made a promise. A Savior would conquer the
serpent we were now enslaved to, and this One would restore what we had forfeited.
He would satisfy both love and justice.
Jesus, fully God and
fully man, walked the dirt among us. For those of us who had forgotten what God
was like, He showed us. He also showed us what it looked like to live a perfect
life without sin.
His willingness to say
no to the serpent when we had said yes, qualified Him for the amazing exchange God
the Father had masterminded.
Jesus had no sin of His
own to pay for. If God the Father took our sin and placed it on the perfect
Jesus, God could put Jesus’ righteousness on us.
It worked.
God’s justice was
satisfied with full payment for sin when Jesus died on the cross. That’s why
Jesus said, “It is finished.” Paid in full.
But remember, Jesus
wasn’t just perfect man. He was also infinite God. So with the penalty of sin
complete, Jesus had conquered the serpent and sin and death itself.
He walked out of the
grave three days later with His victory and ours.
He did for us what we
couldn’t do for ourselves and what we didn’t deserve. That’s what grace means.
And He is ready to
erase your sin debt and apply His righteousness to your personal account if you
want Him to.
He offers a choice
again—still granting us dignity and responsibility—just like in the garden at
first. This time it is the choice to receive the gift of restored friendship
with God and life forever.
Here’s what that process looks like—
1. Declare bankruptcy and turn yourself in.
We don’t appreciate how good the Good News is until we embrace the gravity of the bad news. Here’s the bad news—we’ve blown it. And not just a little bit.
To hope that maybe our good deeds will outweigh our bad is a pathetic and absurd denial of reality.
We stand guilty as charged, of high treason against Almighty God. And our actions have only added to the rap sheet. We are empty-handed and powerless to fix this one.
Agreeing with Him about your need is the first step out of darkness.
2. Accept the gift.
This is how loved you are by the very same God you sinned against: He Himself paid your penalty so you could come home to Him.
He wanted you back. And He moved heaven and earth to make that possible.
It is His joy and delight to forgive you, to give you a new heart, and to bring you overflowing life in connection with Him that starts now and lasts forever.
He is able. He ALONE is able to do it. And He is willing. The cross and the resurrection prove it.
Do you believe this?
3. Say yes to the journey.
Whenever Jesus called someone, He said, “Follow Me.”
It isn’t so much that we invite Him into our lives as that He invites us into His.
You have been invited into the greatest—and most fulfilling—metanarrative of all time. The rest of your life is meant to be a journey of knowing Him and of growing into all His good purposes for you.
It is a journey of thousands of steps, heartache, change, and mystery. It is a journey of joy, discovery, awe, and delight. And it is a journey of absolute companionship with the God who has always loved you and always will.
Pledge Him your allegiance. Bring all of you to Him, nothing held back. In that abandon you will find yourself more fully alive than you ever imagined.
He extends His hand. Will you answer yes?