A reason to love and follow Jesus.

God's big book of love: The bible. 

The whole thing is written with our best interest in mind, and yet some parts hit us with a different kind of sting (or conviction) depending on what season of life we are walking through and what past we have endured. 

What part of the Bible would you 
rather leave out if you had a choice?? 

Some people might like to leave out the ten commandments: coveting. 

For others of us, if we were really honest, we might wish to omit "Love your neighbor as yourself".

Not you though, right? ;o) Okay, good. No. Me neither. :o)

I'm not here to call everyone out. We all have our own battles to fight. The last thing I want to do is run someone into the ground who is already running themselves into the ground. I'll just save you from beating yourself up right now and let you in on a secret--one that was told years ago: "we all have sinned (and continue to for that matter--some of us are just more or less aware of our own personal shortcomings than others) and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Now there is a difference between an outright sin (one where you know you are actively, consciously going against the will of God, but choose to do it anyway) and a time when you are admitting to the fact that you fall short of the glory of God, but you are striving to live a life of holiness to the best of your abilities, leaning on the grace of God and praying for His strength and wisdom to guide you from day to day. I am not posting this to make a judgment call one way or another on your particular situation. This is not a message of judgment. It is a message of freedom. None of us is perfect, and yet all of us is on a journey of being transformed more and more in the likeness of Jesus. God never gives up on us, and I am trusting if you have read this far that you are someone who is actively seeking God's transforming work in your life, or is at least interested in the idea. READ ON.

The message below (in red) is taken from the book, "The Life God Blesses: Weathering the Storms of Life that Threaten the Soul", written by Gordon MacDonald. I love the way it breaks down "the gospel". Check it out:

"He knew what was in a man," John says of Jesus. And that must have been maddening to men who had spent their lives decorating their outer lives with the ornaments of religiosity, power, and wealth. I mean, how do you respond to a person who cares nothing about how much you know concerning the Law and the Prophets, how well connected you are to the temple infrastructure, how many prayers you pray in a day's time, and how may pilgrimages you've made? What defense do you put up when someone looks into the center of your soul and causes you to face up to the evil and sleaze that reside within?

If there is a deeper reason for crucifying Jesus than just that He was a threat to the religious structure and that He enjoyed the affections of the common class, it is that He forced men to look into their souls and face the inadequacies there.

Conversely, it is why others loved and followed Him. Because they came to realize that He was less interested in their reputations as prostitutes and tax collectors and more drawn to the sorrow that lay in their souls and their desire to be liberated from the deadening evil that proscribed their lives up until that point. They wanted clean souls, and Jesus was in a position to help them through forgiveness and redemption.
THAT was the gospel."

YOU ARE LOVED!!!!!!!!!!!!