Apr 28 2024
He is the healing balm for the weary and the broken, the fulcrum of history, and the center of everything. Because He died for the sins of His people, we can escape the punishment we deserve. Because he rose from the grave, we can have power to overcome the darkness we each must face daily, both within our own soul as well as in the world around us. He is the joy in our pain, the wisdom for our foolishness, and the reason why we exist.
Who Is He?
Yet Jesus, being both truly man and truly God, provides the way for humanity to be reconciled to a perfectly just and gracious God. In the person of Jesus, God’s justice is satisfied. In the person of Jesus, God’s mercy is offered.
Jesus is the link between God and humanity
This is necessary because God and humankind have been separated. Because humanity is lost and spiritually dead due to both our nature and our own disobedient hearts and actions, we cannot work our way back into a good relationship with a holy God. Because humanity is too weak to endure the punishment for sin and overcome death, we cannot save ourselves.
Why Should I Believe?
Our culture presents us with a buffet line of offerings when it comes to belief systems, philosophies, spiritualities, and truth claims. And not all items on this buffet line are equally helpful, equally true, or even equally good. Yet everyone inherently knows that, as Solzhenitsyn once famously said, “the line between good and evil cuts right through the middle of every man’s heart.” So belief in Jesus gives us the standard by which we can judge our own hearts and motives.
It provides a spiritual GPS we can use to navigate the forest of truth claims that meet us in this life. But most importantly, belief in Jesus gives us access to a soul-satisfying, healing, empowering relationship to the Triune God described in the Christian scriptures.
What is Grace?
Grace is, as we like to define it here at Meadowview, unmerited favor and ability from God. “Unmerited” just means something we don’t deserve nor something we can’t earn.
Grace is received BY FAITH! Martin Luther explains that we get grace the way the grass gets the rain, we receive it! Faith receives Grace.
How Does Jesus Interact with Your Story?
We all love a good story. When the movie trailer says, “based on a true story” suddenly it takes on a new meaning. We begin to think, “what really happened in that person’s life?” Each person you meet has a “backstory.” The definition of backstory is “background information about a real person or thing that promotes fuller understanding of it.” t is a story that tells what led up to the main story.
Each one of us has a backstory that involves family of origin, searching, dreams, hopes, disappointments, love accepted, love rejected, pain and suffering, educational and career accomplishments, family sin patterns, a crisis of belief, and possibly about adoption into a Kingdom. Each person’s story is real. It is refreshing when people take the time to ask, “so tell me your story?” This question works with total strangers or with someone you’ve known for a long time. You are listening to their story. Why? It is another way of connecting with one another. We gain a greater appreciation and understanding of who they are, their behavior and their responses in life.
The good news is that our backstory is not the way we are ultimately defined. Why? Because there is another story. It is the story. It defines us all. It makes us think about who we are and who we can become. God has made a way for our story to join His story by faith.
The story has four questions.
How did it all begin? Creation.
What went wrong? The Fall.
Is there any hope? The Rescue.
What will the future hold? Restoration.
Jesus, God’s only Son, became our substitute allowing our stories to unite by dying on the cross. For more information go to THE STORY to see how the story began.