Discovering the good news about God's love for you.

God wants you in His family!

Did you know that God wants you to be a part of His family?  Here's what God says about it in His word:

4 Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. - Eph. 1:4-5 (NLT)

God wants you to know Him as your heavenly Father. He wants your life here to be fulfilling and exciting. He also wants you to spend eternity in Heaven with Him and the rest of His family. Unfortunately, you like the rest of us have done something that keeps you from enjoying that special relationship with Him. God explains it this way:

1 Listen! The LORD is not too weak to save you, and he is not becoming deaf. He can hear you when you call. 2 But there is a problem-- your sins have cut you off from God. Because of your sin, he has turned away and will not listen anymore. - Isa. 59:1-2 (NLT)

Sin is choosing to do the wrong thing, or choosing not to do the right thing. In either case when we make that choice we are separated from God by it.

You might be thinking that you're basically a good person. You haven't killed anybody, cheated on your taxes, or kicked a dog. But God desires more from us, than being a nice person. One day a man asked Jesus what God wanted, really wanted from us. This was His response:

37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments." - Matt. 22:37-40 (NLT)

Jesus said we MUST love God with our entire being, and that we are to love other people the way we want to be loved by others. To fail in either case is to fall short of the standard God set. The problem is that no one loves God with their entire being all the time, and no one always loves and treats other people the way they want to be treated. When we fail to follow either of those commands, and we all do, that is what God calls sin.

23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. - Rom. 3:23 (NLT)

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