I used to teach a class on religious practices for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. The first question I asked the students was why I was wasting their valuable time teaching them something they didn’t need. We can ask the same kind of question here. Why would anyone want a personal relationship with Jesus? I grew up in the day and age when preachers pounded the pulpit and got red in the face as they yelled about sin and our need for Jesus and repentance. I always thought to myself “Hey don’t you sin? Why are you yelling at us and not including yourself?”

So let’s begin with that very point. Here I am asking the question “Why not have a personal relationship with Jesus?” If a person commits to a personal relationship with Jesus, it means he or she has admitted to living a sinful life. What about me? Am I like those preachers I grew up with? Pointing at others and not including myself? Let me assure you that I am the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth. I sin every day and multiple times during the day. If it were left to me to try and earn my way into any form of the afterlife based on my good works, I would fail. My daily sins (whether in thought, action, or speech) far exceed any good works that I do. I don’t deserve anything other than the worst any afterlife could offer me. At the same time, I am drawn to something beyond myself, something I can’t define, but I know I need. I know I am not drawn to the Universe, but to whatever made the Universe. I choose to call that “whatever” God. I need God.

Why would I need God? Do I need a bunch of rules designed to limit my freedom and hinder what I want to do in my life? When I think about the rules I live my life by, I must ask myself “Who determines the rules I follow? If I determine my own moral rules, then it stands to reason I must allow everyone else to determine their own moral rules. The next question to ask is a difficult one to answer. What if other people’s rules differ from my rules and interfere in a negative way with my belief which is formed by my rules? For example; the majority of our population frowns on the act of murder, but I can assure you there are those people on the inside and outside of prison walls who believe murder for one reason or another is the right course of action. If a person deems that I need to die because my death fits within their moral rules, I can guarantee you my moral rules are against that occurring. Who then determines which action is correct? Should I die just because another person wants to murder me? Should I live because I want to live? If everyone is allowed to determine their own rules and the rules differ for each person, who or what determines which standard is correct?

We need a standard, and for me, that is the Bible. Why would I choose the Bible instead of any other holy book? There are a lot of reasons (if you want to know them please contact us at contact@mwwy4chuck.com). The best one is this: the Bible does not hide the failures of its heroes. Let me name three who failed in a big way (although there are many others), Abraham (lied about his wife to save himself, not once but twice), Moses (got angry, killed a person, and ran away before Pharaoh could get to him), and David (he slept with another man’s wife, then had that man killed so he could marry his widow). The Bible doesn’t hide the flaws of people, however, it does show how God forgives them and restores them. I need to connect with someone like that in my life. Someone who loves me despite my hypocrisy.

But the Bible says God can’t connect with me because He is perfect and I’m not. How can I connect with God? God is perfect and cannot look upon something that is not perfect. I am imperfect, yet God desires to interact with me because He loves me. His love and desire to interact with me prompted Him to send His son Jesus to earth. The Jewish culture had over 600 laws given by God. Keeping the laws created a right relationship with God. However, mankind could not keep those laws, so a system of offerings and sacrifices was created for followers of God to be perfect. No person in all of history kept those laws except for Jesus. Jesus was perfect.

Back in the days before Jesus, if anyone broke the law (meaning they sinned), they had to provide a sacrifice to have that sin erased and their relationship with God re-established. The problem with that was it only took care of past sins, not present or future sins. When God sent His son Jesus to earth, He did so for one specific reason. God wanted Jesus to become the continual sacrifice for our sins, all of them (past, present, and future). Jesus became that sacrifice by being convicted of a crime he was not guilty of (the Roman governor declared him innocent) beaten, having the flesh ripped off his back by receiving forty lashes with a scourge, and then suffering one of the cruelest forms of execution ever devised by mankind. The good news is that before He went through all of that, Jesus promised He would die, be in the grave for three days, and then come back to life. He kept his promise. Despite a Roman seal on His tomb, a Roman guard of sixteen highly trained soldiers (think seal team six here), and a two-ton stone that had to be rolled uphill to unseal his tomb, his grave was empty on the third day after his death. No one has ever found His body. The Jewish leaders had much to lose if they didn’t find Him, and the Roman empire spared no expense to hunt down anyone who broke a seal put in place by the Roman government, yet no one found the body. The question I have to ask is this; if Christ did not do what He said he would do, where is the body? Until solid proof is provided of Christ’s body being found, I have to say He is who He said He was…God.

So how do I get this relationship with Jesus? It’s pretty easy. First I tell Him that I am a sinner. Next, I ask him to forgive me (he is the continual sacrifice for our sins), and then I need to ask him to come into my life and be the basis upon which I build my morals. Finally, I acknowledge the only way I can have an afterlife with God is through Jesus’ sacrifice for me. If you pray this short prayer and mean it, He will come into your life and you will be a part of God’s family. ” Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.”

If you prayed this prayer, please contact us at this link: contact@mwy4chuck.com. I promise we don’t bite and we will not bombard you, or harass you. We have some suggestions for your next steps as you begin to live by a new set of moral rules.

Moments With Yahweh Staff