Lots of people think they know the answer to this question. He came to bring salvation to a dying world. He came to set us free from being slaves to sin and its consequences. He came because He loved each of us so deeply that He couldn’t bear seeing us suffer from the weight of sin. He came because God had pre-ordained that He would come to take the sins of the entirety of the human race on Himself and pay the penalty for our sins.
All of these are right, but He also came to bring the Kingdom of God to us so that we would know about it, and by following His example we could live it out in our lives and give it away to others.
This doesn’t work if you don’t believe in Jesus or anything that is written in the Bible, God’s Word. You have to believe in God and His Word and in Jesus Himself in order for you to even have a hope of living out even a fraction of His example…His Life that He invited us to share with Him and with others. This takes faith! Maybe not as much faith as believing that we came from apes but even a little faith, like a mustard seed, can make a BIG difference.
The Kingdom of God came to Earth through the ministry of Jesus, the Son of God. He brought it because it was foretold and predestined that HE would come and because His Father wanted us to have access to His Kingdom. The only way that we can have access to it is through the blood of Jesus Christ that covers our sins and redeems us from those sins and the punishment for them and for turning away from Him. Accepting Him as our Savior is the only way to be saved but many people do turn away. I pray that you, whoever you are, will not turn away from His call on your life.
The end of our life on Earth is the beginning of eternity with Jesus if you are a believer. If you are not, then I suggest that you seek Him out soon before the Trumpet sounds and He appears in the clouds calling the church, His Bride, home.
“That’s the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.” This is from a song taught to young children about the Bible in Bible school and in Sunday school too. Although, today was the first time I heard it.
The point is that, as young children, we believe the words of the song and the Bible as well. As we grow older and are taught in schools and in college that it isn’t true, we tend to walk away from that “child-like faith”. As we become adults we “just don’t have enough time” for the Bible and its teachings. Why?
Mostly, it is because the world around us doesn’t have time for it and the teachings of the Bible don’t correspond with the “values” of the world. In other words, “life gets in the way of our belief in God”, at least until we feel that we actually NEED Him. Growing up causes us to lose our child-like faith or rather it gets trampled by all of our “education” to the point of being forgotten until God gets our attention in some way.
The Bible didn’t come together as a collection until the Council of Nicea in the fourth century. A printed Bible with both the Old and the New Testaments wasn’t printed in English until the 1600s. So for 1200 years the Bible was written or printed in Latin and only the “clergy” was allowed to read it and tell their congregations what they should hear and know about God and His commandments and laws. If you don’t believe me, look it up.
My point is this: God gave every book and every letter of the Bible to mankind as our textbook to learn more about Him. It is not just an “instruction” book or a book of rules to live by. God’s Word is our guide but it is so much more than that. His Holy Spirit can make every book in it come alive and be instructive to you and me in ways that a book off the shelf can’t. But the Holy Spirit can only teach you through His Word if you are a Christian and have Him living inside your heart. If you don’t believe in Jesus as your Savior and have the Holy Spirit as your Teacher, then the Bible is just another book and it makes very little sense to you at all.
Read the book of John in the New Testament and ask God to show you what you need to know and Who you need in your life. Then, read the book of Luke and Acts and go from there to the end of the New Testament. Once you have finished that, then go back to the book of Genesis and read the whole Bible, asking the Holy Spirit to show you, Jesus, in these books that were written many hundreds of years before Jesus was born. He is there and your life will never be the same again.
A mother is the one person who loves each of us no matter what. Her love is the very type of love that God uses to model His love to each of us. A father is sometimes present in the family and sometimes he isn’t, but if there are children in the family there is always a mother. This weekend, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Make it a special one for your Mom and for your grandmother, if you can. Some of us don’t have that luxury anymore. All we have are memories. Make some good ones with your mother and your grandmother tomorrow. Happy Mother’s Day to all who read this.
The Living Message of Christ 