THE GOSPEL IS NOT ABOUT PLEASING THE DISAPPROVING GOD

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love ....” (I John 4:16 NKJV) The gospel is not about pleasing the disapproving god of our fallen imaginations. Rather, it is about the shocking fondness of God for humanity.  It is about the freedom of our Father to love us, and our freedom to be loved, and to be embraced in our terrible brokenness. It’s about the determined passion of God to deliver us from ourselves, so that we can live loved, because we are. We belong to God. Jesus bought and paid for us. We always have, and always will be the object of His love. We just can’t see it because of our wrong thinking.  And because we can’t see it, we live with the poisoning weight of guilt fostered by unbelief.  We look to our religion to help free us from this awful situation only to discover there is no healing in religion, just more things to do resulting in more mistakes, guilt and condemnation. Healing happens when we meet Jesus. The good news of the gospel is ‘He came looking for us’. He called us unto Himself; He reconciled us to God. Jesus heals the brokenness and delivers from shame. Jesus leads us out of our terrible and powerless mythology. Jesus shares His life with us. The result is that we experience joy inexpressible and full of glory. It’s called the abounding life of Jesus. Let me encourage all of the wonderful FCF ministers to freely offer this message of Jesus to everyone everywhere. You will discover they have been freed and cannot go back to the same old ‘do more try harder’ religion with its array of twisted Bible verses. As C.S. Lewis said “In the midst of misery they were surprised by joy”. I call that joy Jesus! -Pastor Bill Annis