The Gospel Message...Receive It

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (NIV)

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

 

The  Gospel Message, the message of God's grace and love through Jesus, is a message that must be received, not just heard.  The Holy Spirit breathes the Truth into our hearts and it becomes our strength and sustenance of life. We cannot proclaim the Kingdom of God, the Gospel Message, unless we have received it.  As a friend told me last week, it would be like sharing a drink of water from an empty glass.

 

Jesus calls us to be His witnesses, sent into the world to proclaim the message of His Grace,  and we cannot do that if it has not taken root in us.  God doesn't want us to just parrot the words, but to live the message of Grace.  When we have received Christ as our Lord & Savior, we have received His Spirit, which lives within us to share the Truth in our own lives and as evidence for others. 

 

Bill Bright introduced The Four Spiritual Laws in 1952.  These laws reveal the laws, or truths, that govern man's relationship with God.  These are truths that we must embrace as we live in relationship with God and the truths for others to acknowledge as they seek His love and receive the gift of salvation.

1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2. Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life.
3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord: then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.

The Holy Spirit delivers these truths to us individually so that we can be "children of God" (Romans 8:14) and they are our talking points as we witness to others.

"Daughter, your Faith has made you well, Go in peace."...Luke 8: 48

Luke 8: 43-48...  ⁴³ Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, ⁴⁴ came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. ⁴⁵ And Jesus said, “Who touched Me?”  When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’”

⁴⁶ But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” ⁴⁷ Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately.  ⁴⁸ And He said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

During our discussion in our Bible study of this story, we see similarities with other stories where Jesus' healing was attributed to the faith that He witnessed;
.......the healing of the centurion's servant in Luke 7:9...“I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!”. 
.......the healing of the leper in Luke 5: 2-13...¹² And it happened when He was in a certain city, that behold, a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus; and he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”  ¹³ Then He put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately the leprosy left him.

Jesus made himself available to those in need and as those in need sought Him in faith, they received and left differently than they were before their encounter.  Christ makes himself available to us as well.  One thing is very clear, however; those who came to Jesus in faith also knew the condition they were in.  They turned to Jesus because they had no where else to turn; and He responded to them. 

But we see an example with the rich young ruler (Luke 18: 18-23) where the person coming to Jesus doesn't recognize his true condition and therefore leaves the encounter with Christ disappointed.  The  rich youg man wanted to follow Jesus but Jesus prescribed a healing that required a  faith in Christ that the man did not have...and the man missed out on the "healing" that Jesus offered.

We all  have faith but in whom or in what do we put that faith?  We see in Jesus that he makes himself available to us so that all we need to do is put our faith in Him, confessing and acknowledging our true sinful condition and our need for Him, and he will heal us. We also see in the final words to the healed woman, that His desire for us as we leave our encounter with Him is that we "GO IN PEACE!"

The Lord's Prayer...

Jesus shows us how much He loves us and how much He wants us to be relationship with God just as He is in these words:

Matthew 6: 9-13 (NKJV)  ^9" In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
¹³ And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

As I was  driving the other day I started meditating on this prayer and it hit me that Jesus did not present this prayer as an instructor to his students.  He included himself in the prayer which reveals how He relates to God, His Father, in His humanity.  Here is Jesus Christ, One with God, praying to our Father...(not your Father); asking for our daily bread and asking for forgiveness for our debts (sins).  He even continues to the point of asking God to protect us from temptation.  He included Himself in this prayer which shows how much He loves us.  He gave up His glory in Heaven to walk with us as totally human and in this prayer He shows us the relationship that He has with His Father and invites us to have that same relationship.

Jesus reveals His love for God and His awe of Him.  He shares God's own heart when He prays for God's kingdom to be here on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus' faith and trust in God is shown in the words asking for our daily bread...our sustenance...and most surpising is He asks for foregiveness and protection from temptation.  Jesus who was sinless asks for deliverance from sin and temptation.  He embraces us in His humanity, taking our sins, the sins of the world as His own.  He knew that He had to rely on the love and power of God to overcome these sins which would separate Him from His Father.  He shows us and makes available to us the relationship that God wants to have with us...in our weakness...in our sin..in our humanity.   

Through Jesus' death and resurrection we are delivered from sin.  By believing in Jesus, we recieve the Holy Spirit who will help us to repent from sin and find rest and peace in salvation as we joyfully experience God's kingdom on earth and in Heaven for eternity.