> Practical Family Living

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT JESUS?

Lynda Savage, M.S., LMFT, LPC

Why the big deal about Jesus? I used to wonder that. It scared me. What if Jesus was the only way to the Father? He said: “No one gets to the Father except through me.” I believed all the transcendent ways to obtain peace with oneself before I asked the Jesus question one particularly hurtful afternoon. I was discovering that my good hearted but ultimately anarchist colleagues and professor friends were full of doo doo. It didn’t work to perceive reality a certain way and then that way was truth for me. I got supremely stuck in becoming one with the universe. I was sinking fast. So, in all my fake agnosticism, I cried out in great emotional pain: “God, why did you do this…?” Hmmm. It seems we know, or for sure I knew, there is a God after all. And…He was NOT doing His job, I thought or felt.

Of course, I was kicking up my heels in all the wrong places ignoring Him. I WANTED to kick up my heels in all the wrong places. Until that afternoon, when the puzzle pieces were not coming together but were jiggling farther and farther from understandable places on the board of life. Help God! Why are YOU doing this to me, to us, to…to…my loved ones…to… me.

Why, why, why…It couldn’t be that God’s book was full of answers. That ancient old half fairy tale thing? I prayed. Hmmm. I kept praying. I read it some, then some more. I could actually “feel” God in a scary but compelling way. How could a card carrying Democrat with an advanced degree justify this, this Republican (ya…the bad Republicans against the poor and for war…Nixon, Bushes, and those guys) this churchy thing that was starchy and, and… old. Yeah, OLD. Old people believed that Jesus actually is God. Right? Right. But what if? But what if?

“What if it’s TRUE?” is a question I overheard my very accomplished teacher friend say about Jesus. What if it’s true? What if it’s true… What if it is true….He is God, He loves you and me, He died to save us, we need to admit we have wanted life without Him and ask for forgiveness for this, He welcomes us to His enormous never failing love and everlasting life with Him…what if it’s true that He is who He says and that this is what we need? What if it’s true?

Compliments of Practical Family Living, Inc.

P.O. Box 1676, Appleton, WI 54912 (920) 720-8920

You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute our articles in any format provided that you credit the author, no modifications are made, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you include Practical Family Living’s web-site address (http://www.pfl.org) on the copied resource.  Quotations from any article are also permitted with credit to the author and citing the web-site.  Any use of other materials on this web-site, including reproduction, modification, distribution or republication, without the prior written consent of Practical Family Living, Inc., is strictly prohibited.