Most of us at various times in our life, wonder ‘is there more to life than the things that we do every day?’ Many people feel that something is missing in their lives, a restless feeling inside and, try as they might, they haven’t found what they’re looking for.
Trying to be a nice person or simply going to church doesn’t make you a Christian. The Christian life is primarily about a lived relationship with God through Jesus Christ and then, as you get discover faith in God through Jesus, it’s also about sharing that faith journey with other Christians as we seek to deepen that relationship together, and live a life that is consistent with the way that Jesus taught.
Central to building that relationship with God is knowing God can be trusted.
How do we know that ‘God is for us’? We believe that God is for us because Jesus Christ, the one human being who is completely in tune with God – with what God wants and what God is doing – has carried the burden of our human failure. He let himself be betrayed and rejected, executed in a humiliating and agonising way, and yet he did not turned his back on the human race. Death did not succeed in silencing him or removing him from the world. We believe Jesus is risen from the dead; that he is alive, and that un turn means that his love is also alive, having survived the worst we could possibly do.
Nothing can separate us from this love of God. But that isn’t an excuse to do what we like, knowing we can get away with it and God will love us anyway. Once we know that God is ‘for us’, we open up to the gift that God wants to give us – which is a share in his own love, his freedom, and mercy. We start to breathe with his breath, which is part of what it means to say that we receive God’s ‘Spirit’, which makes us live like Jesus and be ‘in tune’ with God.
If we have really taken in the message of Jesus, we find our lives and our priorities transformed. We will feel motivated to live lives of selfless generosity, always asking how the gifts given to us – whether material or spiritual or whatever – can be shared in a way that brings other people more fully alive. And we shall also be able to trust the generosity of others and be free to receive what they have to give us.
The entire Christian Bible is available online at Bible Gateway.
If you would like to explore Christian faith, please make contact with us or come along to one of our church services. We would love to help you discover more. We also run the Alpha Course each year as a great first step in exploring God for yourself.
This description of Christian faith on this page
is based on a quote from Rowan Williams,
former Archbishop of Canterbury.