BASIC #2: Get Into The Bible
BASIC #3: Get Real In Prayer
BASIC #4: Get Into A Good Church
BASIC #5: Get Excited And Tell Somebody
BASIC #6: Get Your Head On Straight
BASIC #7: Get Ready For The Adventure
This is my prayer for you as you get started in the 7 Basics; “I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think,” Ephesians 3:16-20, NLT.
SCRIPTURES TO READ
___ Psalm 1
___ John 3:1-17
___ Luke 15:8-10
FIRST THINGS FIRST
JUST IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW FOR SURE
Have faith in God; God has faith in you. Edwin Louis Cole
Just in case you accidently found this book in your friend’s apartment, under a bridge, in a trash can, on a park bench, in a taxi, in a palace, underneath your tip, in jail, at the doctor’s office or in some other random place––and you aren’t 100% sure you’re saved, let’s take a moment to review the gospel and make sure you are a Christian!
GOD HAS A GREAT PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE
First, you need to know that God has a great plan for your life. He’s a good God and He loves you. All along it’s been God’s plan to bless you and give you a joyful, peace-filled, satisfying, fulfilling and abundant life. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly,” John 10:10, NKJV.
Unfortunately, many people are not living in God’s highest and best. They are not enjoying God’s great plans and they are not experiencing the abundant life. There is a really good reason for that. Sin.
THE S WORD
We have a big problem! Sin. We’ve all blown it. Our sin has separated us from the God who loves us. It all started in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate that piece of fruit. You know the story.
After Creation, God made man and formed woman and then He gave them instructions on enjoying and guarding the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were filled with life, freedom, joy and abundance! There was only one restriction; they were not allowed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they did so, God said they would die.
Meanwhile, before the Creation of man, one of God’s heavenly angels had gone rogue and was cast out of heaven to earth. This fallen angel known as: the devil, Satan, Lucifer and the adversary came along in the form of a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve and turn their loyalties from God to his own voice. The devil wanted to be the boss. He wanted the allegiance of God’s creation. So, he lied. He duped Adam and Eve with temptation and a lust for worldly, fleshly things and the promise of pride and glory. Sadly, they followed his direction and rebelled against God’s words. They sinned by eating the fruit God had strictly forbidden.
Little did they know the price their sin would require; that act of betrayal and rebellion towards God resulted in death––just like the Lord had said. They died spiritually that day and were separated from God––their physical death manifested some 900 years later. When Adam and Eve sinned, death entered earth and all of humanity. It was the most tragic day. Spiritual death and an eternal separation from God came upon the human race––mankind died.
That’s what the Bible is talking about when it says, “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 3:23, NKJV. Where life resounded, now death reigned. Mankind was lost. Cursed.
The fall of man was the biggest kidnapping event in history. Humanity was duped, hijacked, kidnapped and trafficked by following the deceiver’s lies. Satan’s goal has always been to steal, kill and destroy the very ones God had created. Through sin and the fall of man in the Garden, the enemy was successful in keeping mankind––including you and I–– trapped in a life of perpetual sin and death that resulted in darkness, destruction, defeat and an eternal separation from God.
For thousands of years, humanity was lost and without hope in this world. There was a giant God-shaped hole within all of us. A great gulf separated us from the very One who created us. For thousands of years man tried to resolve this void and earn right standing with God through doing good deeds, establishing religious traditions or embracing philosophical theories. But at the end of the day, our best human efforts could not bridge the great eternal divide. We could not pay the ransom price to cover our sin and death. We could not earn God’s forgiveness or favor. We could not fill the gap. We could not rescue ourselves. We were truly dead in our trespasses and sins and eternally separated from God.
JESUS TO THE RESCUE
God didn’t leave us in that fallen condition. He wanted a relationship with us. When sin separated us from God and the enemy locked us up in his prison of death and darkness, the Lord did something to fix the problem–– He sent Jesus to the rescue! The Bible spells it out, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life,” John 3:16, NLT.
Maybe you don’t know much about Jesus––who He is and why He came. Perhaps, you’ve never known why you could or should believe in Him. Let me take a moment to introduce you to Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the greatest Person who has ever lived in all of Creation and in all of eternity. For those who look at historical evidence and the testimonies of eyewitnesses, the verdict is obvious. Jesus was and is God. He is the beginning and the end, the first and last, the Alpha and Omega, and the Author and Finisher of everything! Jesus is the eternal God and yet, He humbled Himself by stepping out of heaven to become a man and live on earth for thirty-three years. God put on human flesh and came to the planet He created.
While on earth, Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God. He loved people. He preached the truth. He went all over teaching, preaching and healing, to show people what God was like. He said that when people saw Him, they had seen the Father. He showed compassion. He did miracles. He raised the dead. He loved sinners. He healed the sick. He blessed children. He cared for the poor. He taught the Scriptures. He preached salvation. He cared about honesty, integrity and justice. He didn’t like religious phonies. He called out hypocrites. He revealed the true nature of God. He went about doing good things and teaching people about the Father God.
Jesus was a good man and a great Teacher, but the primary reason Jesus came to earth wasn’t to add His name to the list of well-known, religious leaders. The main reason Jesus came to earth was to rescue mankind and restore us back to God. He literally came to be our Savior––our Redeemer. He came to perform the most important and far-reaching search and rescue operation known to man.
Jesus was––and is––the only one qualified to fulfill such a mission. He is God––and man. As God, He humbled Himself and became a man. He was born as a baby in the Manger, so He could die as our Redeemer on the cross. He exchanged His sinless life for our sin-stained lives when He paid the ransom sin demanded with His spotless blood. He shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sin. “For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness,” Hebrews 9:22, NLT.
Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He paid the wage our sins demanded, but He didn’t stay dead. Three days after His death on the cross, God raised Him from the dead.