The Need for Jesus

Can I just say that it's cool to know that people from India and Brazil (or Portugal) are reading my blog. Maybe it's isolated and maybe these are people who know me somehow but I still think that's really cool.

GIFT OF PROBLEM SOLVING?
I'll also comment about the last blog. I am a problem solver, this is one of the things God has blessed me with, and I am really interested in planning. I love figuring out how to fix things, all things including broken laptops, highway congestion, wasted energy, etc. It's a blessing and I am thankful for it. I write this explanation because I'm sure people may wonder why I'm writing about such things.

RECONCILIATION OF CREATION AND HOW I FIT INTO THIS
My pastor, Rich Nathan, talked about how he believed that Jesus didn't just come to reconcile man to God but to reconcile Creation to God (of which includes mankind) and I think this is true. Christ is the one who does this but I believe he has called Christians to help him achieve this task in whatever capacity we can and in this vein, if I can help house homeless people, feed hungry people, and improve the quality of life for those who are suffering or even just normal people, that's awesome. If that's as a planner, that will be a pretty cool thing, to be able to be used by God to bless people like that.

I do wish to point out that I don't believe all of the power to change things is in our hands. Planners want to think that they can change four or more things and thus fix the world or a large problem in it. Certainly planners can help the situation by illuminating problems and recommending action but our ability to help is limited by our knowledge of the situation, position to implement change and power to make it work. In other words, we're not God. Don't be deceived — mankind, including planners and many other pompously prideful professions (like medical doctors), are weak and by definition lack the knowledge and power to fix all (or even some) of the world's problems. Man is weak and must depend upon God, namely Jesus, for strength.

Certainly under the concept of universal goodwill (e.g. both the sun shines and the rain pours on those who believe and those who don't, etc.) of God we can achieve somethings but we must recognize at the beginning of the day, not at the end, that "every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights..." - James 1:17. If real change is going to come, it will be initiated and empowered by Jesus.

TANGENT ON NAZISM, WWII, AND THE ANSWER TO TYRANNY
This is not where I will say vote republican or democrat. I could care less who you vote for as long as they aren't dictators who believe it's okay to persecute Christians or other groups (of which to my knowledge does not include any of the candidates). On this...

I just watched Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants and it is stellar. This comes just a month since I finished reading Elle Weisel's Night. The movie (au revoir) is about a children who attend a Catholic boarding school in France during the Nazi occupation of WWII. It's a powerful movie and having Jewish heritage, it's something personally significant to me. I read Night and I watch this movie and I question, is this going to happen to me? Will I be persecuted like the Jews were? Could I be someone who helps starts a government or revolution that ushers in the kind of tyranny that we see from the Nazis. Furthremore, would I have the resolve to follow in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's footsteps and join the resistance even if it means I'll die in a concentration camp next to those who are oppressed? It's hard to understand how WWII happened just over sixty, sixty-five years ago — the world seems to be a much different place now!

The answer to tyranny and the fear of it is Jesus and the perfect love he brings to a world that seems, at least in America, to not want it. I would pray that all would come to know Jesus for who he is and what he has done in our lives but I doubt this will happen in my lifetime, if ever. Similar to Hitler, there will be a man who comes to power and will resolve to break moral and civil authority like no others have before him. He will demand worship as he believes himself to be God and will produce counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders. Many people will worship him as God, even Christians of who many will fall away from the Faith. Rich Nathan says we need to ask ourselves and more importantly ask God "could I be this man?" The only way we stand a chance of staying loyal to God through this is to become a lover of Truth and a lover of God - the father, son, and holy ghost!

FINALLY, ON THE MATTER OF SIN AND THE NEED FOR A SAVIOR
Do you lie, do you lust? Do you hate, do you use the Father's name in vain? Certainly we are all guilty of at least one trespass and as such, we are law breakers (aka sinners). As the penalty and result of sin is death and since we all sin, we all will die for our sins. Please know this - everyone sins, especially the Christian. In an act of love, Jesus died on a cross as an atonement for this sin and this is "The Gospel."

Our sin is atoned for when we place our faith in and follow Jesus. In this, faith in Jesus allows/leads us to die to our sin now, rather than when our bodies die here on the earth. In dying to our sin now, leaving our life of sin and death and turning toward the Father, the Christian embrace the life and eternal destiny that belongs to whose lives are being hid with Jesus Christ. To embrace this life, Jesus begins a process of the transformation of our hearts to make us more like Him. In this, Jesus may heal or help us look past our temporal problems such as sickness, sin habbits, or troubles and this is certainly a great thing but not the most important being that he is first and foremost the ONLY atonement for our sin. This is why he is know as the the Savior.

When we place our faith in him, we are to die to our own lives and to the ways of the world and live as new creations! In this, we must recognize others as new creations as well as Paul says this is what Jesus has done in reconciling the world to himself through his death, 2 Corinthians, chapter 5:

14 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.