Today, because of Jesus, you have constant access to a God who listens, who loves, who responds. Prayer is about connecting with a Father who loves us, not genie who makes us independent.
That Jesus is the Gate and all the others are up to no good. This implies that anyone who is not Jesus or pointing exclusively to Jesus is trying to lead people astray, rob them of their worth, and ultimately lead them to death and destruction. That seems... severe. So Jesus, we'd like to know, “Why so serious?!”
Love God. Love people. Mean it. Jesus made following him pretty simple. Definitely not easy, but simple nonetheless. The complications of following Jesus come as a result of good, old-fashioned human brokenness. We kind of fumble around in prayer with some shallow “hallelujahs” and then stumble into our families and friend groups with deep fears and insecurities. For many, the pain of seeking to simply follow Jesus and falling embarrassingly short is just exhausting. The sting of those failures can leave us running into dark isolation and unhealthy spiritual independence; or spiritual co-dependence and worship of religious constructs.
God is not confused by the mess of our lives. He built this into the equation in his grand mystery. His steadfast love pursued us even when we were enemies. The "mess" is a factor that shows us our weakness, increases our dependency on Jesus, and causes others to look to the perfect hope in Jesus - not in ourselves.
We have a rough time associating with in our daily lives. Being "saved" implies that we needed saving, but until some of us hit a crisis in life we don't feel we need to be saved at all. Rather, we feel pretty powerful; kings of our own castles feeling like we are running the show like MTV Cribs or something... if you haven't seen it don't worry you aren't missing much, in heaven will be the best crib of all.
God is not confused by the mess of our lives. He built this into the equation in his grand mystery. His steadfast love pursued us even when we were enemies. The "mess" is a factor that shows us our weakness, increases our dependency on Jesus, and causes others to look to the perfect hope in Jesus - not in ourselves.
A Jewish guy, the son of a woman who was allegedly a virgin, born into family of charismatic zealots, decided to base the entirety of his life on earth on a single reality: everything exists because of Him. Not many people have said things like that. Not many people have gone into as much detail or even died to prove it. And, history suggests, not very many people chose to die the way that he did either.
