There are many questions that come up in our heads about how to take that next step in faith. We think it all starts with fixing the “bad” in us, and taking care of the sin in our lives. But I think that we miss something, a big something, which leads us to confusion and frustration.

It’s such a surreal feeling… you know… becoming a Christian; the God of the universe is on your side! But confusion happens within us and leads us to confusion about who we really are and what our next step is. But there are some scriptures that truly explain what happened to the core of your being that changed you from the inside out when you made the decision to trust Jesus. There is a reality that has happened to you and I feel like you should understand it.

Before we look at what’s happened in you, lets look at what God has done, God’s great initiative in humanity is stated in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” I think that this does a great job explaining what God has done in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself.

This is what God has done, but before we go any further look at that word “reconciling”. God through Jesus was reconciling the earth. Reconciling is defined as this, “to move from hostility to friendship” which leads me to say that God in Christ was extending friendship to the hurting broken humanity that is us. This is similar to what it says in John 3:16 “ For God so loved the WORLD…” World, meaning the whole sinful system, broken people, bad people, good people, corrupt people, addicts, all of them. So, meaning God has extended friendship through Jesus to the bad, mean, rude, evil people on earth. God is for broken people and God specializes in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. We are all Humpty Dumpty and we have all had a great fall but there is a God that isn’t just willing to put us back together he wants to. He is reconciling the world to himself. This is the message of Jesus! He loves the world. He came to move the world from hostility to relationship and friendship with him. Not counting their trespasses against them, but what God did is he counted the trespass’s of sinful humanity upon himself, onto his only son Jesus who came to the earth to take all the trespasses of humanity, so Jesus was taken as a sinner so we could be taken as righteous in Christ. This tells us what God did, he eliminated the barrier of sin forever. 

So what is the barrier what keeps us from God? Its not sin, that was taken care of by Jesus in God. It’s about belief, whether or not you can believe! The church was not intended to gather and make sin the main focus. This is why people don’t go to church, this why people stop going to church because we make sin the issue, we make performance the issue, all of our failures, shortcomings, and lies have been placed on Jesus and now the question remains, Can you believe that? Can you trust that? Can you put you future hopes and dreams in that? That’s the issue; whether or not we can accept Jesus, not whether or not we can be good, or sin less but if we can trust he work that Jesus did. Mark 9:23 “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Bring your weakness, bring your short comings, bring the pain you have kept in your heart for so long, its no problem for God, its all been taken care of.

So the question isn’t what to do, the question is can you believe?