How to find peace and new life through Jesus
Jesus (we also refer to Him as Yeshua—and so did His parents!) was a first century Jewish rabbi who literally turned the world upside down through His life and teachings. A great many of those who have heard of Jesus would claim Him as a good, moral teacher, and while He was undeniably this, He is so much more. The problem with limiting Jesus to being just a good, moral teacher is that any other good, moral teacher would not claim to be God—which is what Jesus repeatedly did. Jesus implicitly claimed to be God by claiming three divine rights:
He claimed that He would judge mankind.
He claimed the ability to forgive sins, and
He claimed that He alone is able to grant eternal life.
What punctuates these divine claims with a resounding finality are two subsequent realities. First of all, Jesus died a cruel death on a Roman execution stake. In the midst of this sacrificial act, Jesus stated that He wasn’t helpless by claiming that no one was taking His life but that He was giving His life as a rescue for all those who would believe in Him. The bedrock of all Believers’ faith rests on what happened next. Jesus claimed beforehand that He would come back to life after His death and He delivered the goods by doing this three days later. For anyone trying to disprove Christianity, the starting point is disproving the resurrection—and if they can’t prove this to be false, then the words of Someone who called it beforehand and then rose from the dead should be given careful consideration.
The bulk of us within the Lighthouse each have our own Jesus-story. Not only do we believe His past story, but we have experienced His present tense work in our lives. He is the One we’ve reached out to for the eternal life only He can provide. He is the foundation of our community and the reason we regularly come together. He is the One who we cry out to in our need. He is the one who meets us in our sin and brokenness, and He is the One who can mend our broken lives and make something beautiful out of our personal ashes and failures. Finally, He is the One who is coming again and who has power over death and the grave. If we miss Jesus as the Foundation, we miss everything.
