in ministry, our friends, and for the support and hard work to publish what we hope will be a very valuable resource.
To our Board and Senior Teams as a whole, thank you for the tireless work and efforts you continually give, the support, direction, spiritual guidance, friendship, leadership and heart work.
To those bloggers and podcasters who provide us with content and allow us to share your thoughts on God’s Word, we are blessed and touched by the lives you are touching.
To our team in general, thank you for making God’s work happen by being Kingdom-minded and serving others.
To those individuals who make this ministry happen through their tireless efforts, service, heart-driven hard work, dedication, and diligence. They provide examples of what it means to be a true “Servant of the Most High God.” They are scattered all over the world and yet we are blessed to serve together. So thank you: Alan, Alice, Andria, Becky, Bernard, Bob, Brenda, Calvin, Catherine, Charlie, Christi, Darren, David, Ebony, Elsie, Erik, Feni, Gabby, Gilbert, Henry, Howard, James, Janice, Jason, Javier, Jessica, Joanne, John, John, Katherine, Lenir, Leroy, Libby, Lindy, Lynda, Mark, Marlynn, Maxwell, Mic. Pete, Portia, Rishie, Robert, Royaelty, Ruth, Santi, Steve, Tatiana, Theodora, Tom, Waheed, Wini, Yohana and their families who also serve by their support and sacrifice. We call them our Difference Makers.
A Difference Maker dares to see things differently. They do so because they realize Jesus Christ has given them the freedom to do so. They choose not to just focus on what separates them but what joins them. It is the commonality in the belief that they are more alike than they are different. This likeness brings them to realize that what once separated them now brings them together or it should, can and will. In coming together for the greater good, they realize their differences are defined from others. The recognition of that difference not only creates a deep gratitude but a deep sorrow as well. Both the gratitude and the sorrow push them to greater heights, deeper challenges, bigger risks and a focused vision. The vision of a Difference Maker sees the commonality which can lead to a desire to do things differently in order to become rebels, radical, wild, and out of order. In fact they welcome such labels.
Jesus himself was considered to be truly different and unique and so his followers work, live, worship, and serve as examples to others who in turn realize they too have been called to be different.
Introduction
Perhaps you have just accepted Christ as your Savior or maybe you have been saved for a while and just have some questions or are looking for answers to some questions. We may not have covered all your questions in our book, nor all the answers. It is only our intention to help you grow further in your journey.
In 1964 a rock and roll band, The Animals, recorded a narrative song that would be a number one hit and become a cult classic, The House of the Rising Sun. In the song, the soloist speaks of life wasted in sin and misery. As he pleads with mothers to not let their children go down to The House of the Rising Sun, he points out “many a poor boy” has lost his life there and he sadly admits, “I’m one.”
In 1895 William Newell, a Bible teacher at Moody Bible Institute, also reflected on a troubled youth. Newell penned his testimony to prose and that prose became the beautiful hymn we know today as At Calvary. Two songs describing the two aspects of grace. Without understanding the first song and accepting we are indeed “one wasted in sin and misery,” we cannot appreciate the beauty of the hope in the second song.
This is where confusion lies, discourse occurs, mistakes happen, and lives falter. We do not have the vocabulary to express the reality of our condition without God’s atoning grace. As a result we fail to see the gospel as good enough.
It is not that we are just broken. Rather it is as if all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men were to look upon us, and decide to rescue Humpty Dumpty first! If we look upon our good deeds, those works we think we do so well, through the eyes of God (after all, His opinion is what matters, right?) we would surely rather handle a live skunk.
We are not OK. In fact we are in need of a desperate heart transplant. The only problem is, the hearts available are all dead in sin, like ours.
We are condemned to spend eternity with our own vices, thoughts, interests, senses and inspections. C. S. Lewis in his great book The Great Divorce said, “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.”
This is our fate, our destiny. Because one of us screwed up, the rest are forever tied to the railroad tracks of condemnation with the train of eternity just seconds away. Not to mention we are hopeless, and absolutely powerless, to do anything to rescue ourselves. No, we are indeed in desperate need of a rescue, of a Savior.
Hell is indeed real. It is a place of torment and separation from our Creator. We wander with unquenchable thirst, completely lost in our own devices. Unless mercy is given, pardon is multiplied and grace is free, we will be forever lost.
Dante, in his Inferno, pens the following quotes to describe Hell:
“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people” and
“Ye who enter, abandon all hope.”
Jesus, the perfect God-man, had a vision as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He saw what we humans face on our own. Without Jesus’ perfect sacrifice, our self-formed destiny leads straight to the wrath of God, and that scene shook Him to the core. For the first time He knew fear, He knew emotional torment to such a degree His sweat became like drops of blood. The sin that exists in all of us demanded that because of God’s justice we suffer hell. Instead, Christ suffered on the cross what we deserved, not because He deserved it but because we did.
That is why the cross exists and is the greatest sign of God’s passionate love towards His creation. The cross does not exist because there was any value in us, or we have, or could ever have something to offer.
We do not get, keep, sustain, maintain or receive this gift because we have confessed all of our sins and somehow became worthy of this gift. We never will and never could. The psalmist said in Psalm 130:3, “If you O LORD, should mark iniquities, LORD, who could stand?” (ESV) The writer of the psalm realizes he also could never atone for his sins. God’s great love, and only His love for us, creates the way to Jesus and redeems us from deserved punishment.
If this was a fairy tale, we are not the heroine like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or even Belle. We are something even more despicable than the evil queen.
No! We are indeed the Beast! Our only value is the value instilled by the Creator. Yet, the Creator does not just place and find value in us. He desires us, runs after us, chooses us and redeems us unto Himself so we might be His chosen bride.
We have been wallowing in the pigsty, while He has been preparing for the ultimate party, the most lavish of weddings – ours! Now He has called us in, awaits to eagerly lavish abounding, everlasting grace to us and give us freedom to love Him back.
He is shouting as He offers His grace to us, not “How To’s” or “Steps To” but an “It is finished.” Yet we refuse to accept it, believing in our arrogance and pride that God must allow us do something.
This is not our story, but God’s. A love story and a story of redemption. As God chases His beloved, US, to redeem them to Himself. Not because of what we do, could do or will do but because of what He did.
The record books have been closed as a result of Christ saying “It Is Finished.” Christ gave the ultimate performance, the one we could never give and there are no further applications being accepted by God for the performance of a lifetime. God promised before the foundations of the world that He had a plan; Christ was the fulfillment of that plan. The perfect one became our sin because only He could and as a result God has promised life eternally to all those who now place their faith in that perfect sacrifice.
Now God is not calling us to a life of greater performance, to pick ourselves up so we can do more, be more or accomplish more. For all that needed to be done has been done, and what needed to be accomplished