Day of Praise

We, Jan 23, "Day of Praise"

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6

I could say, "Sometime today, you're going to need direction. Stop! Ask Jesus."

And someone (none of you, of course) could reply, "I tried that, and Jesus didn't reply."

I actually did hear a conversation once where one person asked another for guidance. The person responded, "Have you prayed about it?" And the first person got mad because the other person seemed "holier than thou."

Here's the deal, gang. Jesus and Jesus alone is The Way to God. When the eventual St. Paul of the Bible was still Saul, he persecuted and killed followers of "The Way" as noted in Acts 9:1-2, "Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. "

And what, pray tell, might be the reason that those people were willing to lose their lives at the hands of the unbeliever Saul? And why, through the ages, were countless Christians willing to endure persecutions at the hands of unbelieving emperors? And why were five missionaries to Ecuador in the 1950's willing to lose their lives in 1956 at "The End of the Spear" in service to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? And why is my daughter one of countless people who are willing to entertain and live out the "foolish-to-the-world" notion of pursuing years of medical education and then using it to serve poor (translation "can't pay") people in distant lands or on our home soil of inner cities or rural America?

People do these "foolish-to-the-world" things because there are lots of ways to live your life.

But only One Way, namely The Way of Jesus Christ, works.

So, let's try this again.

I could and am going to say right now, "Sometime today, you're going to need direction. Stop! Ask Jesus."

And someone (maybe each of you) could and is about to reply, "Amen!"

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6

Praise God!

Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson