Knowing Jesus Personally
God's Great Story
There is a story that everyone needs to hear. It is a story of love, hope, rebellion, restoration, and forgiveness. It’s a story that will change your life.
In the beginning of all things, God created humanity to live with Him in the perfect world He had created. We were meant to have a right, loving, and close relationship with God. But we rebelled—we chose to ignore God and His ways. Our relationship with Him became broken and corrupted by disobedience.
As we read the Bible, it’s obvious that God has always wanted to restore our relationship with Him. Second Samuel says that “God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him” (2 Samuel 14:14). His plan was to send His Son, Jesus, to be the one who would pay the penalty for all wrong we’ve done. Jesus lived a sinless life, performed many miracles, and showed His followers what it looks like to perfectly represent God.
As was part of God’s plan, Jesus was sentenced to death on a cross. The Gospel of John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus died for our sins. Through His death, He took the punishment we deserve for choosing to disobey God.
But the story doesn’t end there!
By the power of God, Jesus was raised to life again and demonstrated that the plot had turned—there was hope! God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for us. His promise to rescue and repair, to forgive and redeem, was coming true. The apostle Paul summed it up best when he said that in Jesus, “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us” (Ephesians 1:7-8).
One day, Jesus will return and God will live among his people as it was meant to be from the beginning. And that will be when this great story will be brought to its final conclusion.
The best part is that God invites each one of us into His story. He wants us to have a relationship with Jesus, so that we can also have a relationship with Him. In order to know Jesus personally, we must do two things: believe and act.
We believe that Jesus is who He said He is, that He died on the cross in our place, and that God raised Him from the dead.
When we act, we repent of our disobedience. Repenting simply means that we turn around and walk the other direction. We decide to walk on God’s path instead of our own. We can find the way of God in the Bible, which teaches us how to live for Him. We can also always talk to God through prayer—He always listens and always understands.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve come from, or what you’ve done—everyone is invited to accept God’s free gift of salvation, just like Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are” (Romans 3:22).
