Monday 11/14/22 – The Gospel

Dear Lord, Jesus, thank You for this day! Thank You for all of the blessings You continuously pour out on us. Thank You for making me more aware of Your presence in my daily life. Thank You, Jesus! Praise You, Lord! Bless You, Lord! Thank You for leading, guiding, and directing me in all that I have allowed you to, I ask that You continue to give me eyes to see and ears to hear, what it is that You want me to understand and be able to comprehend at this time in my life. I ask that You continue to show me what I still need to release to You. I ask that you continue to show me how to keep my eyes on You. While I can observe the distractions all around me, to do so without judgment, and to have an awareness of their presence in my life, provides a freedom that I didn’t even realize could exist. Thank You, Jesus! I ask that what I have to share today, and how I share, that all will be glorifying to You, Jesus. I ask all of these things, in Your mighty, holy, and precious Name, Amen.

What is the gospel? What is the good news? God, Master Creator, King of the Universe, Maker of Heaven and earth, God, with a capital “G,” that God, humbled Himself to be a limited human being. Why did He do this? Because He loves you! He wanted you and me to be able to see what the example of a perfect person looks like here on earth, and while we may never be perfect, that doesn’t mean we won’t get better as we strive for perfection. Do we need to get better to be loved more by God? Absolutely not, we can sit in our misery and refuse to grow, and I believe He will sit there with us because He loves us that much. He wants us to experience whatever it is we choose to experience and for us to determine who it is that we want to be. Does all of this mean that we shouldn’t try to get better? Absolutely not, we should be who we want to be and if that is someone that would rather be miserable and not grow, then we don’t need to strive for perfection, do we? However, if you’ve determined that you want to be the type of person that treats others the way the ideal person in your mind would treat you, then you might need to change, I know I still need to. I would suspect that everyone, whether they are willing to admit it to themselves and others, or not, would like a friend like Jesus. But, to get back to the gospel, Jesus in a limited human body showed us that perfection can be achieved with a human body and the mind of God, and we have the human body and access to God’s mind, His Holy Spirit. Jesus then sacrificed His perfection to take on all of our imperfections to not only tell us how much He loves us but to show us how much He loves us. Jesus died. The only way for us to comprehend what happens next is to believe that Jesus died. Whether this is a story to be taken literally, allegorically, symbolically, or any other way really, this story is amazing. Jesus didn’t stay dead, He defeated death to show us that we have eternal life because of Him, because of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus ascends to Heaven in physical form, only to return in His Holy Spirit so that He was no longer in the limited human body to be only one place at one time. He is everywhere, all of the time. He’s with me, He’s with you, He’s talking to you, are you listening? If you want to start on one of the most exhilarating adventures this life has to offer, say this prayer; Lord Jesus, I ask that the scales of this world be removed from me, give me eyes to see and ears to hear, Lord. Please make me more aware of Your presence in my life. Thank You, Jesus, praise You, Jesus, bless You, Lord Jesus! All these things I ask in Your mighty, holy, and precious Name, Amen. It was a prayer or combinations of that prayer, that started me on my journey. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24 ESV). I think that this has been a very broad overview of the Gospel. If you’ve never heard the gospel before, I hope and pray the Holy Spirit covers any of my errors and that you’ve been given a version of the gospel you can comprehend so that you can now see the truth of the Gospel. Jesus loves you and wants you to be aware of His presence in your life. He doesn’t want you to struggle through life alone, it was never meant to be that way, you are not meant to carry your burdens alone. While you can carry your burdens alone, that doesn’t mean that you should. He wants you to know that He loves you, He’ll never leave you, but He’ll never force Himself upon you either. -A humble warrior in God’s army

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” -Romans 1:16 ESV

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever, Amen. -The Lord’s prayer