God wants you

We're the ones who sinned against God, and He's the one who came to save us. He sent His Son, who died for our sins and rose from the dead.

When religious people complained that Jesus welcomed sinners, He told them about a father who went out to meet both his sons. One had blown everything. The other had stayed home and thought of his dad as a stingy boss. Their father wanted both of them with him. That's what they'd misunderstood about him, and what those religious people had misunderstood about God.

1 John 4:9–10 · Romans 5:8 · Luke 15

Paul says we were dead in our sins, and dead people don't have incredible self-discipline and dynamic personal power. God made us alive with Christ because He's rich in mercy and He loves us.

You receive that life by believing in Jesus and trusting Him to save you. You don't have to save yourself first.

Ephesians 2:1–9

When you believe in Jesus, you become God's child. You belong in His house and at His table.

My story is the story of a guy who gets to sit at the table of God Almighty and have Him serve me. That's your story too. You belong to Him while you're learning how to live as His child.

Ephesians 1:5 · Ephesians 2:18–22 · 1 John 5:1

John wrote to people who believed in Jesus so they would know they have eternal life. Your confidence rests on who Jesus is and what He's promised, not on how sure you feel on a given day.

If you believe in Him, you're allowed to believe the good things He says about you, too.

1 John 5:11–13 · John 6:37

Right after Paul says we're saved by grace through faith, he says we're God's craftsmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. It's not grace or works. It's just what order you put them in.

Grace makes you alive first, and then you've got something to give.

Ephesians 2:10

It's by grace we've been made right with God, and it's by grace we've been made right with each other. Paul wrote to people who'd been walled off from each other, and he says Jesus killed the hostility between them. The word he uses is a word for hate. Jesus killed the hate.

He's still bringing people together, through regular folks whose lives are changed by His Spirit in a way that's infectious, until the little sourdough lump leavens the whole world.

Ephesians 2:11–22 · Matthew 13:33