Do you still remember the very first
encounter with the Gospel? To me, it was about an almighty God who loves
me. Yes. It is love when I heard about
the Gospel. Be more specific about the message, I would say it was the feeling
of being loved and I think it’s the Gospel(good news).
Of course later on, I studied the Bible and
learned about how God
loves us, I am a sinner, He wants to save me from sin through Jesus Christ
dying on the cross and so on. However; I
won’t forget His first touch: love. It
is His love that I knew He cares about me.
An almighty God, all knowing God cares about me?! What a news to me!
Most of the disciples from the first century
had commandments from Jesus Christ and went to preach the Gospel addressing
mostly Jews who already knew about God (basically, their society, culture,
moral standards, laws/constitution, calendars are all related with God. God’s
history is deeply related with this nation.) and knowing their identity (They
understand the covenant of God from Abraham till now and to the end. They know
the promises of God and they also experience His faithful, might, power and
love.) For us as a raw gentiles who
never have relationship with this God, it won’t be easy for us to start the
Gospel from justification to unbelievers as same as disciples addressed to
either Jews or gentiles who were around Jews.
However, I believe the all knowing God, Jesus Christ, know all the time
that the Gospel will go all over the world and from His preaching still can see
the glue of full Gospel to the raw gentiles.
What did Jesus preach at that time? Most
of time, Jesus addressed to the kingdom a lot for the kingdom is near through
His present. ( “Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel kingdom
of God
When we try to read the bible story to
our children, what does it look like? What is God’s story? I would like the
assumption of this story divided into a few parts.
1) God – There is an Almighty God who
exists all the time and takes care of all things that we noticed or
unnoticed. He is the beginning and the
end. He hold the whole universe. He is
uncreated and He has no end.
2) God’s creation – He is the creator
who created the heaven and the earth. He
created all the living things on earth and He created humans according to His
image to manage the rest of the creation.
3) Human’s falling – Man’s
disobedience in the Garden of Eden separated the whole creation on earth from
God.
4) God’s plan to redeem the whole
creation through the seed of fallen human family – God shows His perfect love
to us through the redemption of Jesus Christ.
He started from the beginning of sin from human and chose the root of
that family to fulfill His promise to us.
5) Through the dwelling of His
Spirit, He is with us in the dark age. – After Jesus ascension, He promised us to send His Spirit to dwell in
us so that we can overcome our sinful nature and pass our trials. He shows His perfect love to us and expressed
how much He wants to be with us and He never changes His thought and
heart.
6) He wants to remove anything which
could hinder His love to us. – It is all about Jesus' second coming to us. Through the whole salvation process, He is
our coming King, bridegroom and judge.
He is passionate to us is nothing can stop that.
7) God want to be with us and He is
with us. --- He never change His heart.
His love does not change from the beginning to the end. His plan does not change – He loves us so
much that He wants to love us and expects us to love Him back.
