The Adventure of the Christian Faith

    Life has a way of suddenly tossing thought provoking questions at us. Something stops us in our tracks and sets us thinking . . .

    It could be anything, really. Whatever it is, it triggers reflection at a deeper level:


    For centuries men and women have found meaningful, life-changing answers for their deepest questions in the Bible. Unfortunately, it's not always clear to us what the Bible actually teaches about God, about us, and about God's intentions for us. Sometimes we can come well into adulthood without ever having heard a clear explanation of what the Bible says. The real point of the Bible can get lost behind stories about things like a snake in a garden, a man in a lion's den, and a wild ride in a whale's belly. What do those stories have to do with the sorts of questions I'm asking about life?

    But as one digs into it, one realizes the Bible is not so much a collection of stories as it is one story, a true story, with one important point. Here's what the Bible teaches.

    According to the Bible, all our questions— whatever may seem to be their different sources— are ultimately spiritual questions. Questions of meaning and purpose and fulfillment ultimately trace back to questions about matters of faith.

    Now, the issue isn't one of going to church, praying, or being religious. It is a deeper issue, traced back to this: the place that God has (or, rather, doesn't have) in determing the shape and direction of our lives.

    The Bible tells us that God made us, and He made us for a specific purpose: to live for Him. Our lives are not our own; God has a claim on our lives.

    But we have chosen to live our lives for ourselves instead of for God. We may go to church or say our prayers, but God doesn't figure much— if at all— in the way we actually choose to live. It may not even occur to us to consult Him about the purpose and direction of our lives, or to learn what He thinks about questions of right and wrong. It is a spiritual reflex that is present in all of us: to live independently of God.

    As long as we choose to live our lives for ourselves, we will experience to varying degrees a life of emptiness, frustration, confusion, or aimlessness. We may not even be consciously aware of the tension, but at some level we know that life just doesn't seem to go right.
    Independence from God is what the Bible calls "sin." And out of that one foundational sin of rebellion against God all other sins spill: all of the selfish and thoughtless things we do that cause harm to ourselves and others. The consequence of our sin is not only felt in our relationships with others. All these acts of wrongdoing damage our relationship with God, too. Our sin becomes like a wall between us and God, and we find ourselves far removed from Him, both in this life and the next.

    So we find ourselves stuck in our sin, alienated from others, and separated from God. But we have another problem, too. Because we've blown it with God — because we've pushed God out of His rightful place at the center of our lives and ignored His intentions for the way we should live — we also rightfully deserve to be punished by Him. God is holy. That means He is not able to overlook sin. He must punish our wrongdoing.

    Trapped in independence and wrongdoing, and deserving of eternal separation from the One who made us and owns us, the human plight is not a happy one. But God became a person and stepped into the midst of humanity to solve the problem that we cannot solve ourselves. In Jesus, God himself came to restore things to the way they were intended to be from the beginning. First, He laid down His life for us on the cross, taking upon himself the punishment that is rightfully ours and opening the door to forgiveness for the wrongs that we have piled up between us and God.

But Jesus not only died for us. He also rose from the dead. Having purchased forgiveness for our wrongs against the One who made us, Jesus now offers us the promise of a fresh beginning.
Through Jesus, God invites us to live our lives the way He intended them to be lived from the start — for Him.

    When we put our trust in Christ and decide to become His follower, when we begin to live our lives for God as He intended, then our lives are filled with new meaning, and the pieces begin to come together.
Beyond that, we will never be separated from God again but will enjoy for all time a new and restored relationship with God.

    Something has to come to an end before the Christian life can start. We need to come to a place where we resolve no longer to live our lives for ourselves, as we see fit. That is what the Bible calls repenting: turning away from life without God, and turning towards all God has for us.

    We begin the Christian life by coming to a moment when we say to God something like this: "Jesus, I don’t want to live my life for myself any more. I need you, and I want to live my life for you. I believe that you are God and that you died for me to make me right with you. I put my trust in you and turn my life over to you. Show me what it means to follow you." That expression of belief and trust is an invitation for God to begin His transforming work in us.