Allow God To Deal With The Boulders In Your Life....he Loves You

New things in our life changes a lot of things.

Anyone ever had a new baby in their life?

Do you remember the changes that it meant?

What about a new home or a new school?

Or perhaps a new boyfriend or girl friend?

New things bring changes to our lives.

And Christ’s resurrection changes things, it changes our life

It changes the way God relates to us!!!

And it changes how we view God?

Some of you know a song that goes like this:

Be careful little hands what you do.

Be careful little hands what you do….

For the Father up is looking down in love…

Be careful little hands what you do

Unfortunately many people don’t view God this way.

They live and sing the song like this is

Be careful little hands what you do.

Be careful little hands what you do….

For the Father up is looking down in love…

Be careful little hands what you do

But that is not the God who comes to us at Easter…

God came to us to shower us in love.

To understand Easter.

You need to understand Jesus’ mission.

And His is mission,

His entire reason for walking this earth,

For suffering

For hanging from the cross

And for rising again is very clearly spelt out in John 3:16-17.

I invite you to listen to his mission

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

This message changes our life.

And it changes the life of many people.

Did anyone read the story of Anna Nobilli in the newspaper this weekend.

Anna Nobilli for 18 years was an exotic dancer,

However after visiting a religious place and hearing the message that no matter who she is God loves her,

Her life changed.

She did one more exotic dance then followed Jesus and is now a nun in an order that seeks to bring God’s love to people in many different situations.

She is dancing for the Lord.

Jesus’ resurrection not only demonstrates that he wants to love you.

It confirms that He actually loves you and that as part of Him loving you he is giving you the key to eternity.

His death and resurrection means coming your way is the gift of eternal life.

That is what Easter is all about…

God saying if you trust me, to deal with sin you will have life.

God saying to you there is not one sin that can prevent you from spending eternity with me

God wants to give you that gift

And so the question is will you accept it?

If I was to toss out a bucket full of easter eggs this morning and no one picked them up then no one would benefit from them.

To enjoy their sweetness you would need to grab them.

Likewise to enjoy God’s love we need to grab hold of it.

And there lies the problem for many people….

There is a big boulder between them and God.

They find it difficult to accept God’s gift of forgiveness and new life.

Maybe at times you do to.

Maybe you have done something in the past that you know is wrong and you are not quite sure if God really forgives you.

You don’t feel good enough.

Well that’s not a new problem.

In the Luther movie, the story of Martin Luther experienced this early in his life.

He would even go to the extent of making up sins because he was sure he had committed them

In the end his advice is to stopping dwelling so much on his sins and start dwelling more and more on God’s grace

Can I say to you if that is you?

God forgives you!!

Jesus died and rose for you.

But this is not the only boulder that gets in between us and God.

There are also other things that are boulders

Things that get in the road of us having a relationship with Jesus.

Think about what are the boulders in your life?

What are the boulders that exist between you and God…

Maybe they are past hurts….

Perhaps it is the whole question, why does God allow the supposedly innocent people to suffer.

Perhaps there is something in your life that you think or you know you may have to give up to have integrity in following God.

Maybe it could be as simple as your life at present is making it very difficult to develop a relationship with God…like you’re a mother with kids and you keep coming to church but you feel you spend more time dealing with your children than God, maybe its sport or work, perhaps you have a non believing partner or is there something else that prevents you from regularly being in touch with God.