Our Beliefs
Our Heavenly Father made us in His own image as the crown jewel of all His creations. He gave us responsibility to take care of each other and His earth. Tragically, His first friends chose to pursue their own dream of life disregarding God's plan for them. As they began life apart from His presence, they found that something had changed -- something inside. Their friendship with God and desire to be with Him were replaced by fear and guilt and shame and a desire to somehow preserve for themselves some dignity and significance and control of their own. In their pursuit of what they once enjoyed freely, they soon found that they were at odds with each other as well.
Further and Further from God
Years passed. They bore children and their children bore children -- soon the earth was being populated. These children were like their first parents, yet further and further from God, though they too were made in God's image. Always looking for something higher than mere physical existence, they sought for it in just about any place other than in God Himself. And He was the only one who could fill the aching hole they felt deep inside.
The human family reasoned, "Our problem is that we're not spiritual." And so a host of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices arose, each one an attempt to find their way back to God, each one claiming to have God's approval. All the while, our rejected Father yearned to receive His children back into that simple, Father-child relationship of trust, obedience, and love.
God Reveals Himself
God chose one family through whom to reveal His love and His will, the ancestors of Israel -- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God inspired chosen ones from among them to record His Word, His holy law, promising them life. Generation after generation of Israelites disobeyed God's law, if not outwardly at least in spirit, with all too few exceptions.
God Enters the Human Race
God saw that the only way He could get His poor, mixed-up, selfish and sinful
human family back was to come down and win their hearts back to Himself. He
would become a man. He sent His son Jesus to become like one of us and accomplish
all of this. History itself was changed forever. Though born to an insignificant
family in a small country, His life changed everything. Still, most of the
human race, including most of His own people of Israel, turned away from
Him and refused to believe or abandon their search for love and meaning apart
from God. Their ultimate act of rejection was to kill His Son. They did not
realize that in doing so, they were fulfilling God's plan and accomplishing
the very reason He came: to put Himself in the place of sinful humans, and
suffer the punishment due to them.
Jesus Raised & Spirit Sent
Three days later, Jesus' Father raised him from the dead. He showed himself repeatedly to His skeptical followers, and then commissioned them to spread the good news to all the world that God still loved His disobedient children and had provided a way for them to be forgiven and come back to Him. After returning to His Father in heaven, Jesus sent His Spirit into the hearts of His followers to change them from the inside out, making them more and more like Himself, and giving them power over their fears and their selfishness. With this power living in them, they proceeded to carry out Jesus' command to tell the whole world.
The Gospel Spreads
And so it has been ever since. Even today, Jesus' followers are telling their friends and anyone else who will listen the good news that God wants them back, and that He's done all that is necessary for them to come back. It only remains for them to stop trying to find Him their own way, and to believe in the One whom He sent to forgive them, embrace them, and take them back into the Family as fully forgiven and restored children.
The Return of Christ
Soon, Jesus will return. All who have believed will reign with Him, not just as children, but as kings and priests in His Kingdom. All who have stubbornly refused His reign will find that there is a limit to God's patience. Having refused to let Jesus be the One to suffer their punishment, their substitute, they will then have to suffer eternal punishment themselves, and this time there will be no remedy.
Your Move
The Spirit of God and the Church of Jesus unite with one voice, crying
to anyone who will listen, "Come. Believe. Let your deep hunger be satisfied
in Jesus. Live. God is for you. What else can He do?" The next move belongs
to you!
