Get ready to start a journey…a journey through the pages of the Bible and the pages of your life.
When the Light arrived in the darkness, the heavenly Father sent his Son to the back of the line. The Light of the world, the eternal God in the flesh, received no breaks and no advantages. After an unseemly pregnancy and a hard journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the fullness of time had come. And…there was no room for Jesus.
Have you surrendered your life to God? Have you waived your rights, transferred control, and submitted to him? Have you said, “You are God, and I am not.”? Have you trusted in Jesus alone as the One who makes surrender life-changing? Have you come to grips with your spiritual need?
Simon the Sorcerer from Samaria. Say that five times fast! Simon would have loved to hear his name spoken fast or slow. “He boasted that he was someone great” and was known as the “Great Power of God” (Acts 8:9-11 NIV). Upon hearing the gospel, he made a profession of faith and was baptized. However, Simon’s actions caused questions about the genuineness of his conversion.
The apostle Peter walked with Jesus, and he had stories to tell. Stories about Jesus healing the sick (his mother-in-law, for one), calming the sea, walking on water, feeding the five thousand, and raising the dead. He could tell you how he stood at a distance and watched Jesus die, then saw them take his body down and place it in a tomb. He could also tell you that three days later, he found the tomb empty and Jesus alive! His readers had not seen Jesus, but he had. One of the reasons he wrote this book was to hand off the faith to the next generation.
But Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. On the cross, he paid sin’s penalty. He bought us back from sin’s slavery. He freed us from sin’s prison.