Christian Support:
(Flora Preston Shares Words From Her Own Experience To Comfort And Encourage)
What The Bible Says
The Bible’s Main Message: God Reaching Out To Us In Love
The Bible is all about God reaching out to us in love. He wants our company and desires a relationship with us. The Bible teaches that God is a person. God is not a powerful force like gravity. 1God is a person, with the power and ability to create gravity. 2God created us in His image. Therefore He has emotions as we do, such as compassion, empathy, love, hate, anger, joy, contentment and grief.
3God is also holy. He is sinless. Sin is foreign to His character. 4God absolutely hates and loathes sin of every kind – greed, oppression, violence, lies, theft, hypocrisy, pride, murder, adultery, rape, deception, slander, arrogance, and so on.
We are human, and 5sin is part of our human nature. Sin just happens naturally. Often we can’t help it, because sin is part of who we are as human beings. However, sin, which our society calls crimes, usually happens after consistently and repeatedly choosing to do wrong (sin).
Since God is holy, sin can never enter God’s presence. Consequently, 6our sin has created a barrier between us and God. God desires our company and a close relationship with us, yet this barrier of sin stands in the way and hinders that relationship.
Sin cannot be overlooked or excused away. 7God sees and hears everything! God sees every motive, and every hidden thought and deed, even the ones that we may think no one else knows about. We may succeed in fooling the people around us, and we may succeed in fooling lawyers and earthly judges; but we will never succeed in fooling God. 8God is just. In order to satisfy God’s justice, sin must be judged justly and the due consequence administered.
As an act of love, 9God sent His Son to this earth to demonstrate to sinful people, the character and nature of God. Then, His Son would satisfy God’s justice by being crucified and taking the punishment for the sin of each one of us on Himself. Then, with the sin barrier removed, the door would open for us to cultivate a close relationship with Him.
Jesus, who is the 10Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, always lived in close, unbroken relationship with His Father. Jesus agreed with His Father’s plan, demonstrating God’s character of self-sacrificial love. 11Jesus’ attitude before He came to earth and during His life on earth was: “Not My will, but Thine (His Father’s will) be done.”
12Jesus took on the form of humanity and He lived on this earth as a man and interacted daily with sinners. 13The Sinless One was called the Friend of Sinners. 14While He lived on the earth, He radiated and expressed the nature and the character of His heavenly Father. He demonstrated to us, in a very visible way, who God is, and what God is like.
When Jesus was crucified, He was not a victim of an angry mob. He was a Victor. Jesus was willing to pay the price that would satisfy God’s justice. 15This is demonstrated by the fact that at any time during His crucifixion, He could have called twelve legions of angels (72,000 angels) to deliver Him from the hands of an angry mob and from being crucified. He chose not to be delivered; and chose instead, to do what needed to be done to deliver us from the powerful grip of sin and from the eternal consequences of sin.
16Jesus was crucified at noon. The sun became darkened for three hours. At the end of the three hours, He called out “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” During those three hours of darkness, the God of Holiness withdrew Himself from His Son, because His Son had the weight of the sin of the world on Himself. 17The Sinless One became Sin on our behalf.
If one considers all the murders, rapes, oppression, theft, hypocrisy, greed, lies, betrayals, and all other sin committed by mankind in the past, present and future, Jesus bore a heavy weight of sin. God the Father laid the sin of the whole world on His Son, and then withdrew Himself from His Son. Jesus was banished from the presence of His Heavenly Father. The close bond of relationship, that Father and Son had enjoyed, was broken while God’s justice was being carried out.
18Just before Jesus died, He called out, “It is finished”. Jesus knew that He had accomplished the work of removing the barrier of sin between God and man. Jesus died, but death and the grave could not hold Him in their grip. 19God, who has the power over life and death, raised His Son from the dead. Jesus rose victorious over sin and over death.
Now, God is looking for a response from us to this demonstration of His love. God won’t force us to come into His presence. He won’t force us into a relationship with Him. We must want it, and we must actively choose it. In order to demonstrate to God that we also want to begin to cultivate a relationship with Him, we need to respond to His love by:
- 20Acknowledging that God is holy, and that we are sinners;
- 21Acknowledging that sin cannot enter God’s presence,
- 22Acknowledging that in love, Jesus paid the full price for our salvation and our reconciliation with God;
- 23Asking Him to forgive our sin; and accepting, by faith, His forgiveness of our sin;
- 24Acknowledging Him as Lord of our lives, and yield our lives to Him.
When we make this response to His gift of love, then 25He responds to us and fills our life with His Holy Spirit. God gives us His Holy Spirit to be our Helper, our Comforter, our Guide and our Teacher. This is just the beginning of our relationship with God that will continue into eternity.
This new relationship with God is like entering into a love relationship – you want to spend time with Him, get to know Him and learn how to please Him. This is not a religion. 26This is a relationship. The Christian life is not based on dos and don’ts, but it is based on the desire to please the One that the Christian has come to love.
All relationships must have communications. For a Christian, this communication is prayer and reading the Bible. 27The Bible is God speaking to us, as it expresses God’s heart and thoughts. 28Prayer is our talking to God about anything. It can be audible or silent. It can also be just an inner sighing that only God hears. When we talk to God (pray), the attitude of our heart is much more important than what words we use.
As we day by day put our faith in God, we discover that when Jesus was crucified, He not only delivered us from the punishment of our sin, but 29He also delivered us from the power of sin and from the power of temptation. As we daily lean on the Holy Spirit as our Helper and Guide, we discover that God will give us inner strength to conquer the temptation of sin. In this way, God will lead us in victory.
To all those, who by faith accept God’s gift of salvation and reconciliation, 30God promises that they will go to live with Him in His home, when their life on earth comes to an end. Heaven is God’s home. It is where God dwells; therefore, it is a holy place.
May the Lord bless you.
A Challenge For Someone Skeptical
If a person is skeptical that these things are true or that the Bible really is God’s Word, then I give them a challenge:
Read the gospel of John with an open and honest heart. Read one chapter a day and pray: “God, if this is true, show me it is true; and if it is not true, show me it is not true.” Be honest with God and tell him exactly what you think. If you think it is just a bunch of nonsense, then tell Him exactly that. The key is to be honest with Him; and to have a willingness to really find out if it is true.
References:
I encourage you to take time to look up these verses in the Bible, so that you know that the Bible really does teach these things. For your convenience, here is a link to BibleGateway. . It is a free service that offers the Bible on-line in many different versions and languages.
1. Genesis 1:1-31
2. Genesis 1:26-27
3. Leviticus 19:2; Psalm 99:3, 5, 9; Isaiah 30:15; Isaiah 48:17
4. Romans 1:18-32
5. John 8:34, 36; Romans 3:10, 11, 23
6. Isaiah 59:1-2
7. Psalm 94:9; Psalm 139:1-6, 13-16; Hebrews 4:12-13
8. Deuteronomy 32:4; Isaiah 30:18; Proverbs 24:12; Matthew 16:26-27; Romans
2:1-16; Romans 14:10-12;
II Corinthians 5:10; Colossians 3:23-25; Hebrews 9:27
9. John 3:16; John 10:1-18; Romans 8:3-6, 31-39; Galatians 4:4-6; Colossians
1:13-23
10. Isaiah 9:6-7; John 1:1-4, 14, 18
11. Matthew 26:39, 42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:41-43; John 5:30; John 6:38; John
8:28, 29; Philippians 2:5-11
12. John 1:14; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 2:17-18
13. Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34; I Peter 2:21-24
14. Hebrews 1:1-3
15. Matthew 26:53, 54
16. Matthew 27:45, 46; Mark 15:33, 34; Luke 23:44-45
17. II Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 2:22-24
18. John 19:28-30
19. Acts 4:10; Romans 1:4; Romans 8:11; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:20-21; I
Peter 1:17-21
20. Leviticus 19:2; Psalm 99:3, 5, 9; Isaiah 30:15; Isaiah 48:17; John 8:34, 36;
Romans 3:10, 11, 23
21. Isaiah 59:1-2
22. John 3:16; Romans 5:6-11; II Corinthians 5:21; Ephesians
2:1-10
23. Psalm 103:10-14; Isaiah 43:25; Hebrews 10:11-23; I John 1:9
24. Romans 10:9-11, 13
25. John 1:12-13; John 14:26, 27; John 16:13-14; Galatians 5:16-26;
Ephesians 4:30
26. John 17:3; II Corinthians 5:9, 14-15; I John 4:18-19
27. Psalm 19:7-11; Psalm 119:9, 11, 105, 130, 133; John 8:31-32; Romans 10:17;
Romans 15:4-6;
Colossians 3:16-17; II Timothy 3:16-17; II Peter 1:20-21
28. Psalm 66:17-20; Psalm 116:1-2; Isaiah 55:6-11; Jeremiah 33:3; John 15:7-8;
John 16:23-24;
Philippians 4:6-7; Hebrews 4:16; I Peter 5:7; I John 5:14-15
29. John 8:34, 36; I Corinthians 10:13; II Peter 1:2-11
30. John 14:1-6; I Thessalonians 4:13-18
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