Hi guys! I know I keep encouraging everyone to open up and invite Jesus into our hearts, and I have described the effect that this has had on my life, but I have not yet explained why Jesus is so important. We know (or maybe we don't know yet) Jesus is the Son of God, who rose from the dead. But many may wonder, as did I, what this even means. So here is the story of Jesus Christ, which will hopefully explain how and why we are so beautifully transformed when we accept Christ as our savior. Christ as our savior? I know--- that statement sounds weird and "religious" so our automatic reaction is to turn our attention away. I understand this because maybe I would have wanted to do the same before I knew God. But! for anyone who is on the search for truth in life- please stay tuned and keep an open, receptive mind and heart. The details of His story, since I am writing in my own words may not be exact, but it is not the small details that are important. What is important is what God has done for us, through Jesus, and what happens in our lives when we accept this truth.
The start
When God made the world and people, He did not intend for us to turn away from Him.
Wait a minute- How do we know that God made the world or people? What about evolution? the big bang theory? Well, everyone is entitled to believe in evolution -as I once did too, but anyone who has done some soul searching will soon find out (if you haven't already) that there most definitely exists a higher power much greater than our tiny selves, who is not a part of any man made theory. Some of us may think of this higher power as God, "the universe", "our higher selves"... and so on..
I feel that the acknowledgment of a higher power is a good first step. The only problem with viewing the higher power as something other than God is, there is no Jesus without God. And Jesus is the key. What we often tend to reject, or find “narrowminded”, is the FACT that the only way to know God is through Jesus...stay tuned.
New age
I was talking with a good friend the other day about new age thinking. She has been into the "power of positive thinking"-thing for a while and has read many books on the surrounding subjects. She was confessing she was beginning to have a difficult time truly exhibiting the "positive energy.." ideas put forth in these books and maintaining this outlook day after day. After talking for a bit she had a revelation and concluded that the issue she was having with new age thinking was, that a major contradiction continuously comes up in each of the books she reads. Almost all the books seem to talk about surrendering to the higher power of the "universe" (or some other energy along those lines), but at the same time having the power to change reality within ourselves.
I could definitely understand this issue because I had the same one in my past. How are we supposed to surrender, yet at the same time be in control? Is there a higher power or are we the higher power? It can't be both. It doesn't make sense.. Something is missing. Jesus is the missing piece here. There is a powerful, marvelous, mysterious reason why Jesus is the only way to God. By understanding Jesus' story, which I will explain in a bit, things should start to connect and make sense.
Opinion vs. truth
Before getting into the story of Jesus, I think we should all first take a step back and understand the difference between popular belief vs. truth. Although this seems to be common sense, a lot of people forget to distinguish this difference when it comes to spirituality. Just because a group of people, or you or I as individuals, have a certain belief, it does not necessarily mean the belief truth. For example, people long ago believed that the sun was a god and they worshiped it daily. Because they rejected the GOD, the one higher supreme power of the universe. They chose to ignore that God had to have made the sun, and that he is not a sun (or any of the other man made "god" that people worship). Today we understand the purpose of the sun and know it is not a god. Does the fact that millions of people once proclaimed and believed with all their hearts that the sun was a higher power, actually give it any power at all? No. If every person ever born believed in Santa Clause would that make him real? Just because we all believed? No. (Sorry if I just ruined Christmas for anyone :/ cats out of the bag. Santa isn't real.) Opinion or belief does not create truth, it is the opposite, actually.
This idea of belief vs. truth exists very widely today. As Americans we have tendencies to want to do what is best for ourselves and what works for our lives, we like convenience. We sometimes even avoid the truth or blatantly lie to ourselves because the truth doesn't fit well in our lives. We do this with relationships, jobs, and everyday activities, like eating. For example, we may know in our hearts that our relationship is a bad one, but we convince ourselves it will work and things will get better. Inside we know the truth, but facing the truth will lead us to have to change something, and change isn't always convenient. Another example; we may know that eating unhealthy food will eventually cause health problems, but we will lie to ourselves and tell ourselves "this one cookie won't hurt", and we do this over and over again. When the truth is not convenient for us, we sometimes choose to disregard it. We especially do this when it comes to our spirituality.
We shop around through the many different spiritual beliefs until we find one that works smoothest in our lives. The one that will best fit our egos. Maybe we pick the simplest belief so we don't have to put much thought into it, maybe we pick the belief that we think will get us rich and attract money to us through laws of the attraction, maybe we just chose the most popular belief, the new fad in Hollywood, or the belief that we were taught in our households growing up. Maybe its all just way too complicated so we choose to not have any belief at all and call ourselves atheist.
We may say "I believe this", or "I believe that" or "I believe in riencarnation", "I believe in ghosts", "I believe in heaven", "I believe in myself"... as if saying "I believe.." makes it real truth! We understand that we cant say "I believe in the tooth fairy" to make her real, yet we think we can do this when it comes to spirituality. Its actually really silly! And I definitely don't exclude myself here because I had previously done this. We think that there cant be ONE way, because there are so many “ways” (other options-not from God but from man), so we pick the one that we feel is best for us to believe in.
Of course not every person just chooses to settle for the most convenient belief or create their own belief. Some people choose to search, seek and grow; using their personal experiences in order to further their understanding of life. It is these people, who I believe will all eventually find the solid truth, which lies only in Jesus.
Now, just because Jesus is my personal belief, that does not make Him real either. Who am I, anyway? I'm just a human among many. All I have are my experiences and my words. And my words mean nothing! But the words of The God of all, mean everything. And I invite you to be open to experience the truth found in God and His Word for your selves.
OK so we understand now that we have no power to change what is truth vs what is lie. We can only make a conscious decision to listen to what God had to say while he was here on earth. Since he is pure, and almighty, he is the only one who can speak truth.
Jesus Christ
So, who is Jesus? How do we know he is real? and why do we care anyway?
Let's go back to the statement: When God created the world and people he did not intend for us to turn away from him. Now, imagine God for a second, a Spirit in the sky, perfectly content and happy, yet wanting others to see his glory and share in it with him. Maybe we can understand this by imagining if someone gave us a ticket to paradise... Although paradise is absolutely beautiful no matter what, how much better is paradise when you have someone to share it with? Would you even really want to go alone? By sharing his paradise, God sees himself Glorified in his own creation. He can only hope to see Himself or Jesus (one in the same), glorified because only those two powers are perfect in this world. He doesn’t want to see me glorified, or any other human, priest, pope, mother Theresa, because they are not PERFECT like Jesus. Gods love lies within himself, and is targeted at all of us.
...So, God created the world and people. (There is a lot more to the story here, but I'll keep it as short and simple as possible. If anyone wants more detail -just ask). God loved his creations so much, that he made us with free will. He knew he would have no satisfaction in creating little robots that were programmed without thought to just worship him all day. He wanted us to want to love him. And he wants to be the one to pick us up off the ground when we fall. He wants us to desire Him to be our everything. So he gave us the choice to do as we pleased. And starting from the first people ever created, we didn't chose God.
Adam and Eve
Now, Im sure you have heard the story of Adam and Eve before and have possibly decided to throw it out the window, like I did when it didn’t fit into what was cool or popular. Growing up, I was taught many bible stories, but could never really picture them being true. I dismissed the stories as sort of fairy tales. Now, though, I would put my hands in the fire for any of the stories because my heart has been transformed and the blinders have been lifted off my eyes. So, if you have heard the story of Adam and Eve before, please try to view it now with new eyes. You have a choice: believe a theory, or accept what Gods words are, and embrace them as your own.
The first people God creates are a man, Adam and a woman, Eve. He gives them a beautiful paradise to enjoy. They are so blissful and in pure peace, because they are in Gods direct loving presence. They are naked, but don't even realize it because their hearts are focused on God, rather than themselves. As they are walking through their beautiful paradise, God tells them they can enjoy fruit from any of the trees he has made for them, except one. He says that the one tree that is off limits will cause them anguish and he is protecting them from any sort of pain.
Free will
Since God gave people free will, free will involves making decisions for yourself. When Adam and Eve are fully enveloped in Gods light, they have no desire to eat from the forbidden tree. This means there is no actual decision making involved, which would mean they don't have free will. So, since God is fair and just, he allowed for there to be a opposing voice, (this is the evil in the world, aka Satan) speaking to Adam and Even just as clearly as God had. He allowed for Satan, in the form of a serpent, to sit in the forbidden tree and offer an opposing view on the fruits of the tree, therefore giving Adam and Even the option to choose God or evil. Remember, without the serpent, Adam and Eve would be essentially robots.
The serpent talks to Eve and tells her that God is hiding special powers from them and if they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they can have these special powers. Now, Adam and Even knew that God was the One who created them and they could clearly feel all the happiness and beauty surrounding them, but they were faced with a decision; to believe the serpent or to trust God. They sadly chose to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree and believe the deceiver.
*Our Issue Today
The minute they ate the fruit, they suddenly became concerned with the self. Do not miss this. If you do not know, or have rejected the story of Adam and Eve, this is a good reason why we need to reconsider! This story speaks to us directly and points out our present abandonment to God. When they turned from God they were no longer free and careless in his presence, but instead worried and uncomfortable. For the first time, they actually realized they were naked and felt ashamed. They became self-conscious.
Today, we can relate with these feelings of being self-conscious. We are constantly concerned with the way we appear to the world. We even undergo major surgeries to change our appearances because we are so self conscious! This goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, who chose to turn from God and therefore step out of His brilliant light and into the darkness of Satan, who comes through for us today as the ego, deceiver, accuser and tempter. Our current focus as people is typically only on ourselves, unless we choose to step into the brilliance of Gods light, which washes out all of the self-absorbed feelings. It is through Jesus, that we are forgiven and able to step back into Gods glorious light.
Right from the first creation of people, we didn't chose God! That is why today, it is not the common or natural thing for us to do. We choose Satan over God and still continuously do it. We often even oppose the idea of God, and "convince ourselves" (its actually Satan-the ultimate deceiver/ego convincing us) that God isn't worth all of our love and devotion.
Take some time to digest this, and lets fast forward.
This is where the story of beautiful Jesus begins.
How God saves us
God, being fully spirit, having no physical body -male nor female, decides he will come to earth himself, to pay the debt for our betrayal of him and also lead us back to his love. He does this by being born on earth into the human flesh. God is omnipresent, meaning he is present everywhere at the same time. This allows him to be the God of the universe and also be spiritually in the body of a human, Jesus -which means 'The Lord saves'. We need to think about Jesus as the skin that holds together an eternal presence who created the universe. He is not just a man, but the only way God could walk on “out turf” as if he had legs like ours.
God being God, could have zapped himself to earth in the form of a king, sat on a thrown, and ordered everyone around. But! Since our God is a humble God, he instead was born to this earth as a newborn child. And to a poor mother, to say the least. God wanted to show us that this life on earth is not about money or riches, it is about loving God, and loving each other as God loves us. Jesus' mothers name is Mary, and I would love to talk more about her, but I'll try to keep the story as simple as possible (just ask if you want more details, though!) Basically to sum it up, I will just say that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus. This fact should not make us stumble; it should be clear by this point that we are only human, and everything is possible with God.
Now when Gods spirit entered into a human body, he too felt all of the temptations and lies from Satan that we, as humans, deal with everyday. In fact, Satan knew Jesus was God in the flesh, so he fired all his ammo at him every day! Since Jesus was human, he had the same options that we all have. He could choose to trust God, or fall into temptation, like Adam and Eve did and we all do.
Jesus' story
Jesus was raised like a normal child, yet throughout his childhood, his mother would often find him in the temple "praying to my father" as he would say. When Jesus got older, around the age of 30, he traveled from town to town teaching everyone of the love and forgiveness of our God. He also taught them how God intended for us to live; full of love for God and love and acceptance for each other.
At first, many people didn't care to listen to Jesus; they knew of him as a poor kid from Nazareth, knew him as a child, knew his mother and didn't see how he could know anything about God. But once people started to listen to him speak, they started to see that he viewed life much differently than they did. For example, if someone steals something from you or hurts you in any way, you may dislike that person. Jesus would speak about how easy it is to love the people who love you, but how it takes a godly person to love the people who hate and hurt you. People loved this new way to look at life and one another.
The more people listened to Jesus, they could see something so beautiful in his spirit and they believed him when he said he was the Son of God. Only when they believed him, would he show them the miracles he was capable of and heal people right in front of their eyes. He would cure the blind and heal the dying and more. Jesus' purposes from God the Father were not to walk around and show people miracles in order for them to believe, this would again defeat the purpose of free will. If people see proof, they have no decision to make. Proof is proof. Gods purpose was to give people the option to believe Jesus or not to, just like we still have the option today. It is not about proof or our "God experiments" turning out right. It is purely about faith. God made it so much easier and better off for us. All we have to do is believe in him and the work he has done and is still doing.
I can tell you from personal experience that since opening my heart to Jesus and believing he is the Son of God, I have seen miracles in front of my face. I would love to share some, if anyone is interested just ask.
Religion
Since many people loved Jesus and all he stood for, they decided to follow him in what he was saying. This angered the religious leaders of the towns, called Pharisees. Pharisees were robed "priests" so to say, who created their own truth by illusions, and created "holy" ritual to follow. The tried to make themselves holy before God by their own ways. God used the Pharisees to show us how religion is just useless ritual and law without Jesus.
This idea of religious people still continues today. Many of you may know a very religious person who thinks they know everything there is to know about God and speaks of Gods love, yet showcases little love in their own hearts. This is why religion and humans often corrupts Gods purity. God cares nothing about knowing a lot of information about him, it is about knowing him personally and therefore exhibiting his love through your life.
Anyway, these Pharisees were getting really angry that Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God and people were listening to him, instead of them. They were jealous and outraged and often tried to catch Jesus in a lie or test him on his knowledge of God. They always wound up looking silly in the end.
The passion of Christ
Eventually, the Pharisees became so angered by Jesus, they decided they wanted him dead because he was shining light on their flawed belief system which made them incredibly intimidated by him. They all got together and gathered anyone who thought Jesus was a liar, and went to Pontius Pilate to ask permission to kill Jesus (there is much more detail here but I am being sparce) Pilate, he told them they had no evidence of Jesus ever doing anything wrong, so they would not be allowed to kill Him. This angered the Pharisees so they told Pilate that they were going to riot and cause absolute chaos if he didn't allow for them to kill Jesus. Even though he knew Jesus was a good man, and his wife even told him not to allow Jesus to be killed (she had a dream about Jesus), he didn't want craziness through the states, so he said they could do as they wanted with Jesus.
Since Jesus is the Son of God, He knew that this was His fate. He knew He was going to be ceased and killed. He understood that His purpose in life was to come to earth to personally take on the sinful nature in all of us since the first creation of man and women, and therefore allow us to feel what it is like to live in Gods light again. Jesus was to pay the price of all the sins of the world, past, present and future on the cross. Since God is fair, he chose not to just erase the fact that we chose to turn our backs on him, someone had to pay the price, and he decided to pay it himself. He payed for what we did, and did it by using his own body and blood sacrifice; a sacrifice we people can understand, and physically see, so we would have no question what was going on.
Jesus was in a garden at night praying to God for strength because he knew what awaited him. He was already starting to bare the burdens of suffering for our sins, and being tempted by Satan to escape by a different death, and was literally sweating out blood from his pores. The pain and burden was so severe for his human nature, but he took it all in order to free us.
While Jesus was in the garden, the officials ceased Him and dragged Him to be locked up and than crucified. When all the people who loved Jesus heard this, they were distraught. Jesus had taught them so much about Gods love, and the were finally free from the grips of temptation, worry, anxiety and all of the feelings that Satan holds on us. Jesus' followers wanted this same freedom for all of their future generations as well, but didn't know how this would be if Jesus was going to be killed. They wondered, if people didn't know Jesus, how could they know God?
The Pharisees hired men to beat Jesus so, so horribly, with chains and whips and knives till his skin was completely shredded up. They did this in front of a crowd of people and Jesus' mother Mary had to watch her Son bare all of this. She tried to go and comfort him, but they wouldn't let her. They put a crown made of thorns on his head and mocked him saying "now look at the king, the so called son of God!". All this time Jesus endured the pain without even cursing a word to the men. After the beatings, they made Jesus carry the cross they would crucify him on up a hill and whipped him till he got there. Once at the top, they nailed his wrists and ankles to the cross and slit a hole in the side of his ribs with a knife. They pulled the cross upright on the hill for every person to see.
The Pharisees mocked Him saying "If you are the son of God why don't you come down from that cross". The whole time though, he was forgiving the people who were doing this to him at this exact moment. While a few mocked, all the others cried so hard because they knew of his pure love for us. After long, painful hours, Jesus died. The moment He died, the whole earth shook, and lightning and thunder roared. A banner that hung over the hill where Jesus died, snapped in half. All the Pharisees were petrified because they knew just then that Jesus really is the Son of God. And that they had just killed and tortured the Son of God!
The resurrection
Eventually, a friend of Jesus took his body off the cross, wrapped it tightly in shrines, put it in a tomb and closed it with a massive rock. Three days later, Jesus' friends went to say a prayer by the tomb, and found that the rock had been moved and the body of Jesus was gone. Automatically, they assumed the Pharisees had stolen his body. But when they stepped inside the tomb, they found the shrines laying perfectly where his body should have been, as if they body had evaporated. They were very confused and left the tomb feeling uneasy. They ran to tell Jesus' mother what had happened. As they were all together, Jesus walked into where they were gathering. He was risen from the dead! As soon as they saw Jesus, a flame appeared above each of their heads.
The gift of the Holy Spirit
The flame was the Spirit of God being born into the bodies of all the believers of Jesus, for all generations to come. Now we can walk with Jesus always, if we chose to have faith in him. And when we do this, his Spirit becomes part of us and nothing can ever take it away from us. No person, no circumstance, no tragedy, no lostness. Our flesh (bodies and soul), on the other hand, can be taken from us any moment; we can lose our minds, have anxiety disorders, become depressed, paralyzed, diseased and so on. When we live without Jesus, we are in a vulnerable state at all times, nothing in life is certain. The Holy Spirit when awakened through believing Christ died for YOU, is untouchable. We are stamped with the Holy Spirit, the seal of approval. Ephesians 1:13 states: "And now you have all heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago." The spirit is ours, freeing us from concerns of body and soul, left to just BE. And when we can just BE present in the Spirit, we live blessed life's because we get to live like Jesus Christ, nice and close to God with no hold of any temptation on us at all . Not ruled by a desire of any sort. Just FREE. :)
Jesus rising from the dead was meant to show us that death is not the end. He proved to us that he is the SAVIOR of everyone, and death has lost its sting. He fulfilled all the requirements of being the savior. He helps us to see life eternally, rather than just thinking this world is so important. The world is not important, the people of the world are. Today we focus more on money and things and selfishness rather than people.
Absolute and complete freedom
We need to awaken to the truth. We are so close! We know in our hearts there is more to life. We try and try to live lives full of purpose; doing good, being balanced, being positive, being healthy... but all we can do is try, we cant ever just BE. This is where the problem with self-help comes in. I have been there -reading the books about self improvement, trying to remember all of the things I must do to be a happy, balanced person. It is just too much trying, too much remembering, never coming naturally. Because without Jesus Christ, we can only live by body and soul, disconnected from God. Our focuses, even when they are supposed to be on others, on family, on friends on inner happiness... are still for the most part only on ourselves. We want to make others feel good so we can feel good! Its not our fault though, we are lost, and confused trying to just feel HAPPY! But the motive is all wrong without Jesus.
We trying to live righteously but it is impossible to do so perfectly and effortlessly. Without God, we are only living for the flesh, the physical body and soul part of us. But the body and soul will die and be buried with this earth and whatever is than left in us will be doomed to eternal separation from God (aka Hell). The Holy Spirit of God will go on, though. We can only be truly and naturally selfless and free when we stop living for the body and soul and awaken the Spirit, by accepting Jesus Christ as our personal savior. He is the key. (You can read more info on body, soul and spirt in my first blog- "The search for our true selves").
Over 500 people witnessed seeing Jesus crucified and then seeing Him alive and resurrected.
You can look up "the real face of Jesus" and see how the shrine that covered Jesus face has been recovered and scientists were able to see what His true face looks like! Its amazing.
You can also see what happened to Jesus on earth for yourselves, if you rent the movie "The Passion of The Christ".
We are baring a burden we were never meant to bare. Jesus has already bared it all, all we need to do is acknowledge him and what he has done for us on the cross. Accept that he died on the cross to save YOU from the hurt of this life. He is our Savior. He saved me from any lostness and
freed me, I am a witness.
I love you all so much! God bless.
You have to read this blog after. Its so important and a quick read.
