This year I accepted a friend’s suggestion—which was seconded by Pastor Steve—to use the Bible Project’s, One Story That Leads to Jesus, as a plan for reading through the Bible in one year. If you’re not familiar with the Bible Project, they produce short creative videos with terrific drawings to demonstrate Biblical passages. For this specific Bible plan, each video either introduces the day’s upcoming content or summarizes the overall themes and contexts that were just studied. 

At this point, the plan has covered Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Psalms 1-47. Those books make it quite obvious that we humans have an ancient track record of easily grumbling when we don’t get our own way. Time after time, the Lord’s chosen people can be found rebelliously saying “No!” to their Father and abandoning commitments to Him when they face something scary or difficult. 

This is helping me understand more clearly who our Father is and how He demonstrates over and over again His deep love for humanity—which includes you, me and every other person on the planet. The Old Testament is jam-packed with stories of how this marvelous God our Father never leaves or forsakes us. He continually sticks around, inviting humans to join Him in His work of goodness and justice even when we don’t respond or defiantly turn our backs on Him. Quite honestly, I don’t know how He does it! 

This Bible journey is also helping me realize more fully that part of Jesus’ purpose here on earth was to absolutely convince you and me that our Father sincerely and relentlessly desires to be with each one of us.  How can this be possible? Why does a perfect God want to be intimately involved with such imperfect people? That truth alone just blows my mind! 

In just three books of the Bible, there’s conclusive evidence that we humans can’t be trusted to keep our promises…yet He is always faithful. He keeps every single word He speaks even when we have trouble believing those words are true. We seem to believe since He’s out of sight, we can’t possibly be on His mind. What will it take for you and me to fully accept our Father’s offer to align our lifestyle, thoughts and hearts with His pure, royal and righteous character? 

Here’s the ultimate kicker: Our Father is an expert on how fickle and flighty we are, but He wants us anyway! He genuinely desires to be with us. Our wayward and obstinate ways don’t deter Him one bit. He knows we need His perfect Son’s sacrifice to restore our broken relationships with Him. When we surrender our lives to Jesus, we get re-connected to our Father. We become His family. He gives us new soft hearts so we can believe and receive His fatherly love. The more we receive it, the stronger our love grows for this beautiful One who created our souls. As a result of being loved, we are able to respond with even more acts of tender obedience. Our Father also gave us His Holy Spirit to live inside so we can stay in constant touch with Him and think, feel, and act in union with His glorious character. 

This, my friends, is not simply good news. It’s the GREATEST NEWS we could ever be given! Because of Christ’s sacrifice and Holy Spirit’s transforming power, it is now truly possible for each one of us—like Jesus did—to show the world who our Father really is. As His sons and daughters, we can demonstrate Him in our thoughts, words and deeds. No wonder Jesus said that whoever believed in Him would be doing even greater things than He did (John 14:12). Collectively we redeemed humans are actually the way heaven invades earth. If you’re reading this blog and one of God’s children, you are quite a force to be reckoned with!