It’s hard to wrap our heads around this whole “Jesus thing” sometimes. You can easily get caught up in all of the history in the Bible and some of the confusing rules in the Old Testament. You might even say, “How does that affect me now” or “What do I need to do to be on God’s good side?”

In short, God doesn’t need all of the little religious details to make our lives meaningful. The most important word in the Bible is love. All the other details in the Bible are important, but just as any good parent, God our Heavenly Father is more focused on our connection with Him. Those biblical details were put there for our benefit, to help break down barriers and foster that parental connection. God wants a relationship with us, pure and simple.

To help us into that relationship, there a just a few basic things to keep in our minds:

In the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. You and I are not here because of some one-in-a-zillion random chance. You and I live because God wants to be loved. And because of that need for love, He gave us the freedom to choose Him or reject Him. Love is a gift, and a gift that is forced is no gift at all.

Unfortunately, our ignorant selves often pull away from God’s desires for our lives. We all do bad things, called sins. Those sins can’t just disappear, or else what have we learned from them? There must be a just and legal transaction. You get paid back for what you do, and the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. To put it bluntly, if you commit evil, you can’t get into Heaven.

That’s why there is Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God in human form. Fully God and fully man. God lowered Himself from His heavenly throne and was born of the Virgin Mary. She needed to be an untouched virgin to let there be no doubt that it wasn’t of human means, but of God’s. Jesus was humanly born not only to experience what God’s children experience, but to show us that there’s a better way to live the life He’s blessed us with. However, remember earlier when I said that the wages of sin is death. We deserve punishment because of our bad choices, but Jesus took that punishment for you and I on the cross. It was a legal transaction where Christ paid every penny of what we owe due to our sinful nature. Then, just to show that God has power even over death, Jesus rose from the grave. Life, death, and eternity; nothing is too far out of God’s reach because it’s all His.

When we accept Jesus and His finished work on the cross, we are accepting that payment and telling Him yes, please take our sins away. He can have them all. All of the sins we’ve done and all we will ever do, He has washed them away by His blood. In dying, Jesus destroyed our death. In rising, Jesus restored our life.

So remember, Jesus loves you. He wants to be first place in your life. His promise to you is that He will work all things for the good for those who love Him. Let Him go before you in all that you do so that you may prosper in every area. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, because if you do, you will be forgiven of your sins and experience a love so complete and wonderful that it will take all of eternity to show you just how much God truly loves His children.

God’s blessings to you.

DH