James 2:14-18- How We Live

Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. "I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me."

Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan "Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you've convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you're getting a divorce. That will really hurt him." With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!" And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting "as if." For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. When she didn't return, Crane called. "Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?"

"Divorce?" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him." Her actions had changed her feelings. Motion resulted in emotion. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often repeated deeds.

I. Belief and Life

We have spent these last two weeks looking at what it is that we believe as Christians. Two weeks ago we looked at the center of our faith; we remembered that God loves us and that Jesus died for us. We remembered that we are called to believe and follow him and in this we will find salvation.

Last week we looked at the importance of what we believe and we used the format of the Covenant Affirmations to point out what is important to us. We also realized that what we believe and what we do are very connected. We talked about the fact that what we believe affects the way we live and how we live affects what we believe.

And so we come to the action today. How are we to live as Christians? Once you believe the truths of Christianity, how does this affect what you do? And the best place to go with answers to this is the book of James.

We, as Covenanters, should have much affinity for the book of James, where we are told that it isn’t enough to believe right, your belief needs to affect what you do. How you live needs to be informed by what you believe. This is where we came from. We came from a church in Sweden that was a state church. At the state church, you were born into your faith. It was automatic and your actions, the way you lived your life had no meaning. And our Covenant ancestors felt that there was something missing in this. They felt that you needed to live out your faith. They felt that you needed to show your belief by what you did. And they were right.

There are churches out there that are very concerned that you believe a certain way. They want to drill right teachings into you so that you will know their theology backwards and forwards. They want to make sure you believe the world is going to end a certain way. They want to be sure that you understand exactly what it is that Jesus did on the cross and how that affects us, they want you to know the difference between justification and sanctification, two things that Jesus does for us. (If you want to know the difference, just ask one of the confirmation students). But we as Covenanters, and many other Christians say that there needs to be something more. You cannot give lip service to the right beliefs if you don’t live the right practices. Our denomination came out of a group of Christians who believed that there needed to be a personal commitment to the beliefs that are spouted. It’s not enough to say you believe, it’s not enough to call yourself a Christian, you have to live it.

And so we come to James 2 where it is spelled out for us so very clearly.

II. Faith and Deeds

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them?” Now, of course, there is danger here. For we all know that it isn’t our deeds that save us but Christ who saves us, through faith. But true faith, true following involves living the life, walking the walk.

Brian McLaren, an evangelical author, describes it by saying that orthodoxy needs to be linked to practice. There is orthodoxy – right thinking, and there is orthopraxy – right practice of the gospel. And when we look at Jesus’ teaching we discover that he is much more interested in right practice than right thinking. Or maybe the problem is that we think you can have one without the other, when in truth the two need to be so put together that you cannot separate them. Right thinking – Love your neighbor as yourself. Right practice – Care for those less fortunate than yourself. Right thinking – God created this world and everything in it. Right practice – be stewards of all creation. Right thinking – Jesus died to save our sins. Right practice – share this good news with those around you. Right thinking – Jesus is Lord. Right practice – follow his will and his way. Right thinking – God answers prayers. Right practice – lift your needs before him so he can answer. Right thinking – Everything we have belongs to God. Right practice – treat the things you have as God’s and not your own. The list goes on. If the thinking doesn’t have the practice to go with it, do you really believe it?

Our beliefs need to influence our actions to be taken seriously. If you don’t act upon your beliefs then you probably don’t really believe. When Elijah stood on the mountaintop and called for God to send down fire to prove himself to the people, we know that Elijah believed that God could do this. When Peter told the man on the side of the road to get up and walk instead of giving him money, we know that Peter believed God could heal this man. For both of these as well as people throughout the Bible, belief is shown by action.

And yet we aren’t saved by our actions. It isn’t our deeds or our works that bring us salvation. But James makes it clear here in chapter 2. “Show me faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” James is about putting your faith on the line. He is about letting it all hang out. Don’t let your faith be something that is just a shield to protect you from hell. Don’t let it be fire insurance that you pray and then let sit in your safe forever more. Instead, live out your faith; act out your faith; make it real. Youth today put it this way: don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk! Are you ready to walk the walk of faith?

III. Love Your Neighbor

Scott McKnight, a professor at North Park College, has written a book entitled The Jesus Creed. In this book he says that Jesus takes the Shema from the Old Testament and does something revolutionary with it. The Shema is the center of the Old Testament. It is that which the Jewish people of the Old Testament took to be the most holy truth, the deepest belief, the orthodoxy of what they stood for. The Shema states, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” But the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is not enough for Jesus, he needs to add another part of the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:18, which tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In his book, Scott McKnight says this is the center of Jesus teaching; it is the center of what Christian orthodoxy and Christian orthopraxy should be. Love God; love others! This is the center of the answer to the question how should Christians act. Yet, unfortunately, this is often not the answer we receive to this question. We often think being a Christian is about being stoic or being severe. We think being a Christian means you can’t have any fun. We think being a Christian means you have to continually show everybody else that you are better than them. Yet the center of Christian behavior is found in the Jesus Creed: Love God; love others. This is truly what it means to walk the walk. This is what being a Christian, this is what living the Christian life is really about. But how do we do that, how do we love God and love others? It’s so broad, it’s so nebulous; we need something finite.

And that is why we have the teachings of the Old Testament, the teachings of Jesus and the letters of the apostles. They were written to help us know how to love God and how to love others. And even more than that, this is why we have the Holy Spirit, to help us know how to love God and love others.

God gives the Ten Commandments: don’t kill, steal, commit adultery, covet or lie; honor God, your parents and the Sabbath. Basically, don’t live your life directed towards yourself. Instead, live it directed outwards. Don’t let yourself become curled inwards. Don’t focus first and foremost on your own needs. Now this is counter-cultural. It is not how our society tells us to live. It is not what commercials tell us is important. But it is what God calls us to. Instead of thinking of yourself first, God tells us to think of him and others first. Jesus is even more explicit about this in his teachings. He wants his followers to follow God the way that he did. Jesus didn’t care about his own needs in the way that others did. He didn’t worry about catching leprosy when he approached the sick. Instead he focused on the needs and hopes of those around him. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t take care of himself. But his life was focused outwards. He acted out his love for his Father by loving all those around him: the Pharisees and the prostitutes; the saints and the sinners.

We are given a moral code as Christians. There are things we are told not to do. There are things we are told that we are to do. But what you will discover is that if you start truly thinking outside yourself and focusing on this Jesus Creed. If you truly begin acting out that call to love God and love others, you will find yourself following that moral code that God sets before us.

The message is really so simple, yet we make it so complex. Is the thing you do glorifying yourself or is it glorifying God? Is the action you take about satisfying your wants or is it about reaching out to the needs of those around you? Are you going to live for yourself or for something greater than yourself? In the Old Testament, after Israel had entered the land God had promised them, their leader, Joshua, was preparing to retire, for the wars were over. And their leader brought them together and warned them that there would be much to distract them from God. There would be much that would call them away from God and find them focused on themselves. They would be wooed by other gods who promised to meet their whims. The false gods of the people around them were much easier to follow than their God. They could be bought off and they didn’t require loyalty. The people of Israel would be chased after by other peoples who encouraged them to focus on being self-reliant instead of relying on God. They would be tempted away from God by the people and culture that they would come in contact with. But Joshua told them that they had a choice. “Choose this day whom you will serve. Will you serve the God of your families, the God of Abraham, the God that brought you out of Egypt? Or will you serve the gods of the peoples surrounding you?” We have that same choice in front of us. Are we ready to serve God by loving him and loving others or are we going to be wooed by the society and culture around us that tells us the importance of taking care of number one. Are we going to live our lives working to shine Christ’s light on those around us or will we put all our energy into making sure we are comfortable. Joshua gave Israel the choice, but then stood up to be counted himself, “As for me and my household. We will serve the Lord.” Let that be our call. Let that be our promise. Let that be our commitment. We will serve the Lord. Amen.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 - What We Believe

If you had come to visit me in my dorm when I was in college, you just may have come across some most interesting sights. One day you would have turned the corner leading to my room and you would have seen me running down the hallway extremely fast and then throwing myself forward, kinda jumping forward into the air, and then crashing on my knees and actually really hurting myself.

You see, I had decided to question my assumptions, my beliefs. Something that it is good to do, especially when you are in college. So I decided to question whether God exists. No, this wasn’t a belief I needed to question. So I decided to question whether there was sin in the world. Again, no, not a belief I needed to question. The belief that I felt the need to question was the important truth that people cannot fly. You see, as a child, I had seen a loony tunes cartoon where Bugs Bunny and the Wily Coyote were just children and the Coyote was chasing Bugs around and they went out over a cliff and didn’t fall. Bugs pointed to the Coyote that he should be falling and the Coyote responded that he hadn’t learned about gravity yet. Bugs gave him a book that explained gravity as he stood there over nothing, he read the book, looked down, went uh-oh, and fell to the bottom of the cliff (the first of many times).

So I wondered whether the reason we couldn’t fly is that we believed we couldn’t fly. And so I felt the need to test this in a scientific manner in college. And thus, you would have found me running and jumping with all my might and then crashing into the ground and calling out in pain. I felt that if I held back in any way, it wouldn’t be a true test. And for any of you who want to repeat this experiment, trust me, we aren’t able to fly.

Whether I believed in gravity or not, it doesn’t make it any less real. Whether I accepted the truth of it or not, it was there, pulling me to the ground with all the grace of an elephant. So, my beliefs don’t matter to gravity. It’s going to affect me whether I believe in it or not. But my beliefs do affect me. If I truly believe in gravity then I will use it to my advantage, if I ignore it, I hurt myself.

In many ways our belief in God is much the same. It doesn’t affect him as much as it affects us. When we believe we will find ourselves coming in contact with him and working with him instead of against him.

What you believe affects the way you live, and how you live affects your belief. The two are connected, and it is not that one just leads to the other. They both influence each other. Let me give you an example of this. If you believe that God hears prayers, your life will be lived in a different way. If you believe that God answers prayers, your actions will show it. In believing these things, you will change the way you act; you will begin to pray to God because your belief tells you that there is something to be earned from this. But the opposite of this can be true also. You can begin praying to God whether you believe he will answer or not. And as you enter the life of prayer your belief will be changed, you will start to see God work and it will become harder and harder to avoid belief in the power of prayer. So today we are going to talk about belief in God. It will be a bit heady and intellectual, that’s what happens when you talk about beliefs. Next week we are going to talk about living the life of faith. But it is hard to separate these two because they are so very connected. So, today as I talk about what it is that we believe, I hope it connects to our lives, how we live. And next week when I talk about how it is that we are to live as Christians, I hope it connects to our beliefs.

The Bible talks a lot about belief. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 we hear one of the central beliefs of scripture mentioned by Paul: the belief in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Not only is the belief important but the fact that it is something that is shared. Paul, in this scripture connects his belief and what he is teaching with many who have gone before him. And therefore, today, as I talk about what we believe as Christians and as Covenanters, I want to connect what it is we believe, what we have seen, what we have heard with those who have gone before.

We as a Covenant Church have a document about what it means to be a Covenanter, what we think is important belief wise in understanding who we are. Our document is called the Covenant Affirmations and talks about the things we find important. These are central to who we are as a church, and therefore is something that it is worth us knowing, and knowing well. And so we are going to look at the five Covenant Affirmations this morning.

The first of the Covenant Affirmations is the belief in the centrality of the word of God. Covenant constitution tells us that the Holy Scripture, the Old and the New Testament, is the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine and conduct. We begin with the Bible. We believe that this is the Word of God. This is the place to turn when we have questions of faith. This is the place to turn when we need to know what to believe. This is the place to turn when we need to know how to live. This is why we have a sermon each and every Sunday, so that we can hear the Word of God and apply it to our lives. This is why you are encouraged to spend time in scripture yourself on a regular basis. Is the Bible central to your life? Is it the place you turn to with your questions and problems? Is it the place where you find answers? I know people will say that it’s an old book, the newest part of it is about 1900 years old. The oldest about 3500 years old. Does it really have anything to say to us today? Does it really deal with the issues and realities that we deal with? I believe it does. I believe that the Holy Spirit keeps it fresh and helps it to apply to each and every generation. I believe that this old book is a keeper. It is the place where God speaks to us the clearest.

The second Covenant affirmation is the belief in the necessity of new birth. We believe that you need to be born again. We believe that you need to accept Jesus into your heart, receiving forgiveness and eternal life from God. As covenanters we believe that there is a need for conversion. We are all called to reject sin and commit ourselves to faith. Now, this new birth is different for all of us. I have told you about my friend’s father whose conversion happened as he hung for his life over the side of a cliff. He had lived a rough life before and turned from this life to find Christ waiting for him. That is a very different story than mine, in which I cannot remember the moment I asked Christ into my life, for I was very young. But in both of these extremes new birth happens. In both of these instances, God offers new life and leads us down a path of faithfulness and obedience. Have you made this commitment to Christ? Have you been born anew? Are you living the life of a Christian, a child of God, a disciple? Being a disciple, being born again is more than just praying a prayer when you’re 12. It’s about following, it’s about giving control of your life to Jesus, it’s about repenting, turning and heading a different direction.

The third Covenant Affirmation is that the Church is a fellowship of believers. We think there’s something important that happens when God’s people come together. That relationship with God is important, but it isn’t just a relationship with God that matters. There’s something that happens when we come together as God’s people and enter into relationship with each other. We are all part of the body of Christ, whether we like it or not. Now, there are Christians who don’t see a need for Church. They figure that they can come in contact with God on that golf course just as easily as in a church building. We’ve all heard this said in some way or another. And as Christians and churchgoers, we often get upset at them for saying such things. But I worry that maybe it is true. Perhaps, because we haven’t been the body of Christ that we are supposed to be, they are able to come in contact with God better away from us. If so, then it is not them that need to change, but rather we who need to work better at being the body of Christ.

The fourth Covenant Affirmation is our conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. We feel it is important to realize that we cannot do this thing we call Christianity on our own. We realize that we like to think we can make it by ourselves, and so we pray that prayer at camp and then think we can work out our own salvation by our own strength. We then come to a wall and cannot go farther. This is because we are ignoring the fact that Jesus promised us something, someone to help us in this call that he has given us. We are given the Holy Spirit. We aren’t expected to do it on our own. God provides for us in ways that we cannot imagine and the Spirit intercedes for us where we fall down. This comes from the covenant affirmations: “The early Covenanters in Sweden were linked by a common awareness of the grace of God in their lives. They spoke of the Holy Spirit communicating this warm sense of God’s grace to each one individually and directing them to a common devotion to God in Christ through the reading of the Bible and frequent meetings for the purpose of mutual encouragement and edification. They perceived the Holy Spirit leading them corporately to common mission and purpose.” You see how the Spirit is involved in each part of their lives: in their Bible reading, in their coming together as a church, in their call to salvation. Are we ready to let the Holy Spirit be involved in each part of our lives?

The fifth Covenant Affirmation is the belief in the reality of freedom in Christ. We believe that, as Jesus says in John 8, “if you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Jesus doesn’t offer us chains, he doesn’t offer us a life of structures and nitpicks and rules that we must follow to the letter if we expect to earn salvation. Jesus offers freedom. Now, Jesus offers this freedom to all his followers, but so often we ignore the freedom or take advantage of it. Jesus offers us freedom from sin, and yet we hold on to sin, unwilling to allow ourselves to be free from it.

This freedom allows us in the Covenant Church to sometimes disagree with each other about certain issues and yet live in communion with each other. We hold to the centrality of the basics, but we allow freedom of interpretation on other issues. Thus, we are willing to baptize infants or dedicate them. But freedom for its own sake is wasted. “Freedom is not for self-indulgence… but to serve and love God, in whom alone is found true freedom.” God’s freedom has a purpose to it.

The Covenant wants to add a sixth Affirmation this June at the annual meeting: something else that is central to who we are as covenanters. This sixth affirmation is our commitment to the whole mission of the church. We believe in the importance of the church’s mission. We have a purpose in this world. We have a place in this world. We weren’t just created to be separate from the world around us and build up walls to protect ourselves from them. Instead we are to have a relationship with them. And this relationship is to be two-fold. First, we are to share the truths with them that we find. We are to spread the gospel to them. We are to let them know about the God we serve. Second, we are to help them. We are to be a place where the poor and weak, the strangers and prisoners are cared for. Again, it isn’t enough just to have that vertical relationship with God, God wants us also to have lateral relationships with each other and with those around us. And again, we know that God doesn’t expect us to do this on our own, but rather sends us his Holy Spirit to help us.

So these are the things that we as Covenanters believe are important in following God. These are the things that are central to our understanding of what it means to follow and believe: that we place emphasis on the word of God, that we acknowledge the necessity of new birth in Christ, that we are committed to the whole mission of the Church, that we see the Church as a whole and as a fellowship of believers, that we depend consciously on the Holy Spirit throughout our lives, and that we remember that Christ offers us freedom. Hopefully these are things that you believe, and that you can enter into relationship with and get to know better. They are worth spending time with, as they have come down to us from our history as Covenanters. They have been prayed over as we attempt to explain what it means to be God’s children. So, know the covenant affirmations, and enter into them in a special way. As you begin to believe them you will find that the way you live will be changed.

John 3:16-18 - Jesus Loves Me

There is a story of two men who were on a plane together. They got to talking and one asked what the other did. The man replied that he was a minister. “Oh, I don’t go for all that God stuff, it’s for children, you know, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The minister didn’t know quite how to respond to this man so he asked the man what it was that he did. The man replied that he was an astronomer. “Isn’t that kind of childish,” the minister replied, “you know, twinkle, twinkle little star…”

There is another story about one of the great theologians of the 20^th Century, Karl Barth. He was visiting New York for a conference and at the end of his talk he asked if anyone had any questions. He got a few questions about what he had been talking about, some theological questions that, quite frankly, were really boring. And then someone asked him what the greatest theological discovery he had made in all his years of studying the Bible was. He thought for a moment and responded that there was one truth that really had become real to him as he spent more and more time studying scripture and trying to know God better. And that truth was, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

A simple truth, one that it can be argued is for children. But one that has so much meaning and power to it that one of the great theologians of this last century claimed it as central to his whole understanding of theology. So today we are going to look at this simple truth that comes to us as a children’s song, Jesus loves you.

I. Back to the Basics

It’s interesting, but there are some parts of the Bible that are known much better than other parts. I can guarantee you that there are places in Numbers for example, or perhaps some of the prophets at the end of the Old Testament where the vast majority of us have never gone. But there are other parts that jump out and have become a part of our culture, they have become a part of the world of Christianity. The 23^rd Psalm is one of these. “The Lord is my shepherd” There’s books out there that approach that psalm from a Christian, Muslim and Jewish perspective. There are books that approach it from an atheistic perspective, but they all look at how it helps us to work through difficult times. John 3:16 is another of these. Whether it’s written on a sign at the Superbowl or on a t-shirt walking down the street. John 3:16 is one of those scriptures that Christians have realized summarizes the Bible so very well. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It’s such a great summary of the Christian message, for it tells us of God’s love, it tells us of what that love did for us, and it tells us how we are able to receive that love.

“God so loved the world.” We believe that this world is something that God created. And we believe that, though he is disappointed in some of the things that go on in this world, he loves it. Just like a parent can be disappointed in things that their children do and yet continue to love their children. So often, the disappointment is precisely because of the love. So we begin with the truth of the children’s song. Jesus loves me, God loves the world. This is the starting point of our faith. This changes everything. It changes the way that Christianity can be seen. It changes the way we view God.

We all have different views in our head about who God is and what God is like. For some reason, growing up, God always looked to me a lot like Charlton Heston’s version of Moses: an old man with a white beard who holds on to thunderbolts. The God I grew up imagining looked a lot like Zeus. For some reason, there was always anger or terror in this version of God. For some reason he was someone that I worried about, that I was afraid of. Maybe it was those lightning bolts that I pictured him throwing around. Others see God as a stern disciplinarian. Others see God as this happy-go-lucky guy who will let anything go. None of these characterizations are true to who God really is, though.

God does reveal himself to us throughout the Bible and we learn a few key things about him. We know that he has a bit of the disciplinarian in him. He has suggested certain things that people should do if they want to live good and healthy lives. He gave us the Ten Commandments. He set up rules for his people to live by. Again, I like to think of this as good parenting. Sometimes parents have to set down rules for their children that the children don’t understand at the time. When a parent tells a kid that they cannot play in the street it might feel to the child like the parent is just trying to put limits on the child, but in truth, the parent is thinking about the safety of the child. God’s rules and laws do much the same thing. Not only is adultery something bad and against God’s law, it is something that is bad for you. God also tells us in the Bible that he is a jealous God. He wants his people to follow him. God also tells us in the Bible that he is all powerful, but that he gives us control of our own lives. And again and again, he tells us that he loves us.

“that he gave his only begotten Son” Jesus came into this world for a reason. It wasn’t just a fluke, and Jesus wasn’t just a great teacher. Jesus tells us himself that he was the Son of God. And Jesus did things that only the Son of God could do. But again, Jesus being the Son of God and Jesus coming to this world is a sign of God’s love. Jesus was special. And his coming to this world, which we celebrate each and every Christmas, and his living in this world and teaching us how to live, and his dying for our sins and rising on the third day which we celebrate at Easter time, all were done out of love.

“that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” Here is the hope and the part where we come in. If we believe in Jesus, if we accept him as our Savior and Lord, then we shall not perish but have everlasting life. We’ve spent some time at this church talking about what it means to “believe in” Jesus. It’s important to realize that to believe in Jesus doesn’t just mean that we are to accept some facts as true. Instead, our actions and our faith are much more connected. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior we discover that our lives are changed, we discover that we are not living for ourselves anymore but living for him. This is what it means to believe in Jesus. It means that we are to follow him and love him and submit to him.

II. Not to Condemn

John 3:17 continues by telling us that Jesus did not come into this world to condemn the world but to save it. This, I believe, is where a lot of people get mixed up. When people look at Christianity, they see a group that claims absolute truth. They see a group that claims to be on the inside, saved by God with everybody else around them condemned to hell. People think that by putting this choice of heaven and hell in front of them, whether to follow Christ or not, God is condemning them for who they are. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. And this is the thing that I believe non-Christians sometimes don’t get about Christians. When Christians tell you about the need to repent and turn to God, it’s not out of spite, it is because they love you, it is because they are following the God who loves you and wants you to be saved.

Billy Graham puts it this way: “No matter how bad you are, how evil you are, or how sinful you are God loves you. God is crying out to your soul and heart. "I love you. I love you. I love you." What is your response to the love of God? Will you say no and laugh in the face of God? Will you refuse God's love and spit into his face? Or will you say yes to God, yes to Jesus, and yes to the Holy Spirit? Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Trust Jesus to save you and let him be the boss of your life. What will it be? The decision is yours! Are you on the side of God or are you his enemy?”

III. What God Offers

Let’s go back to the beginning. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. When God looked at the world that he created, he spoke out and said that it was good. God created this world, God created people to be good. He created us all to live in relationship with him and with each other. But God didn’t want robots who followed him because they had no other choice, he needed to give us free will, so that we could choose whether to follow him or not. And he did that very thing. And humanity discovered sin, we discovered unfaithfulness, we discovered selfishness, and we discovered the things that go along with this like pain and death. And we can see throughout history and even in our own lives that these things have a control that sometimes seems overwhelming. We condemn ourselves by living lives of selfishness, by refusing to love our neighbors, by letting pride and fear rule our lives. When these things are in control in our lives, our relationship with God is hurt. There is a divide between us and him that these things cause. And the fact is that we cannot cross that divide. But God, in his wisdom and in his love, sent his Son to cross that divide and show us that we don’t need to let pride and selfishness and fear rule our lives. Instead we can follow him. Instead we can live again as his children and have that good relationship that he created us for. Instead we can allow him into our lives to change our lives. But these things, pride, selfishness, sin, they have power over us, they have a hold on our lives that they aren’t ready to give up. And so there needed to be a sacrifice to conquer that power that sin has over us. So God himself offered the sacrifice, in the death of his own Son. And because of this, the condemnation can end. Because of this, the death and resurrection of Jesus, not only can our sins be forgiven, but their power over us is gone.

This is the freedom that God offers. This is the power that God has. This is the love that God shows. We all have sins, we all have things that have power over us, even today. We all have problems that we cannot work our way out of. Don’t be ashamed of this, for you aren’t the only one like this.

Instead, give God power over the things that have power over you. Let him work his healing and his love in your life.

God created you to live in a special relationship with him. He created you to have a special purpose, a special meaning to your life. He created each of us for this. You don’t need to work yourself to a certain point before he will have anything to do with you. Give him control. Allow him in. He will fill you, he will make the changes he needs with you. You don’t need to get to a certain point before he will say yes to you. He’s saying yes to you right now. He loves you.

It is truly that simple. Accept Jesus, allow him into your life, and you will find salvation, not only from hell, but from the sins and trials that plague you here on earth. God is offering this to you out of love. He is offering this to you because he wants you to live a better life, because he wants you to know the joy that his love brings.

You can be a better person. Not because you are able yourself to conquer the sins and difficulties in your life, but because God will conquer them for you. This is what he offers to all who know him and follow him. This is what he offers to all whom he loves. Let him love you, let him work in you, let him make you new. Amen.