This is the final devotional/song for the school year (and has been for the last 5 or 6 years). I love having the opportunity to share my faith with young adults and hope that my time with them this year has helped them in their faith-walk.
We are very different, you and I. We may live in the same country (maybe not), live in the same state, same county or attend the same school. You may live in a house, apartment, trailer, mansion or be homeless. You may be a teenager, adult, or adolescent. You may be the same race/ethnicity but maybe not. You may speak a different language. Even if none of this were true we have one thing in common; we are both sinners. These following passages remind us that we are all sinners but we are bought with a price (Jesus). This is why I share devotionals with my students. This is why I share my faith with my wrestlers. This is why I live the way I do. It's all God. Please read the following and then please watch the video to remind yourself that you are a sinner and you are guilty of sin and ultimately the death of the Son of God. But we are given a gift, we are given an acquittal.
Romans 3:21-24
But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this.
Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.
John 3:16-18
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.
Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
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