Category: Jesus

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What’s All The Fuss About Jesus – Part 2

Wipe that silly grin off yer face!
smiley faces to symbolize the joy and hope found in Jesus
You Christians are not realistic. You keep on smiling and being happy even though this world is getting worse and worse every day. How can you maintain such irrational hope against the facts of what we see on the news each day?

The Answer: It is all about hope in something bigger than us –

“…Christians can hope because faith always reaches beyond earthly circumstances. Its confidence is in a person. And no other person in recorded history has influenced more people in as many conditions over so long a time as Jesus Christ. The shades and tones of his image seem to shift with the needs of men: the Jewish Messiah of the believing remnant, the Wisdom of the Greek apologist, the Cosmic King of the Imperial Church, the Heavenly Logos of the orthodox councils, the World Ruler of the papal courts, the monastic Model of apostolic poverty, the personal Savior of evangelical revivalists.

“Truly, he is a man for all time. In a day when many regard him as irrelevant, a relic of a quickly discarded past, church history provides a quiet testimony that Jesus Christ will not disappear from the scene. His title may change but his truth endures for all generations” (Bruce Shelley).

Put your Hope in Jesus!

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Jesus

What’s All The Fuss About Jesus?

Why do we Christians keep talking about “getting people saved”? What’s all the fuss about? Why can’t we leave well enough alone? People who don’t have a “relationship with Jesus” may be happy enough and don’t appreciate us telling them they need a savior.

So why do we keep on? Why do we insist that salvation is needed? Why won’t we stop?
Here’s why:

“Man needs salvation not because he is imprisoned in a body but because he willfully chooses his own way rather than God’s way. Man’s evil is not in his body; it is in his affections. He loves the wrong things. This affliction is so deep, so basic to man’s life on earth, that only a special Savior can free him from himself. That is why Christianity insists that Ghandhi and all who agree with him are wrong. Man does not need a teacher. He needs a Savior” (Bruce Shelley).

“The danger for Christianity at present is that it could become secularized, worldly, reduced to a kind of socialist humanism. This is not what the world needs; and, if Christians were reduced to offering the world only this humanism, they would soon be set aside and rightly so, since there have always been socialists, teachers of morality, and organizers of society: they have rendered service, but they have never saved anyone.

“The world today does not need greater social organization but a Savior: man today needs someone who will answer the fundamental problems of his existence, which no social structure has ever been able to answer” (Jean Danielou).

I need a Savior. You need a Savior.

That Savior is Jesus!

“Our problem is not an inadequate education. It is a rebellious heart.” – Ravi Z.

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Jesus

Wanting Jesus To Grant My Three Wishes

Jesus says to ask, seek, and knock. He says that whatever I ask in His Name, I will receive.
Awesome! All I have to do is tell Him what I want from Him, throw in the phrase “In Jesus’ Name” at the end of the prayer, and God will give me whatever I’m asking for… right? a genie's lamp that might be used to grant three wishes

OK, maybe not. But then, what did Jesus mean? Does His statement have something to do with my motives? What if I am asking for the wrong things or with the wrong motives? What if my wishes are not His wishes?

According to Jesus, God is ready to give us even greater gifts than our earthly fathers. But the example Jesus gives is a son asking for a loaf of bread or a fish – for nourishing, healthy food. I don’t remember too many times when I asked for nourishing food. Instead, I was always asking for an extra serving of dessert!

When a child asks a parent for good, beneficial, healthy things, parents are quick to say “Yes.” On the other hand, when we continued to ask for the wrong things we’d get Dad’s furrowed brow, Mom’s long “sighs,” and a “No, I am not going to get that for you.” And while a temper tantrum on the floor of the grocery store might work on some parents, it certainly didn’t work on mine and it certainly won’t work on God.

So maybe the asking, seeking, and knocking in His Name is not a description of how to force Jesus to do our bidding like some genie in a bottle. Maybe it has to do with right motives. Maybe it has to do with our maturity and knowing what God wants, and therefore knowing what is good and healthy for us and for others.

As we grow in maturity in our relationship with God, He wants to have us talk to Him about mature things. Parents love to talk to their children, but they expect as they age to have more mature conversations. God wants us to talk to Him about all things, but it really pleases Him when we talk to Him about the things that are in His will – spiritually focused things. Praying for the things that break His heart.

What are some of the things that you think are most near & dear to His heart?
What are some of the spiritually-focused things that we ought to be praying to Him about?