It's Personal-Who Is Jesus Series

Title: Personal-Who is Jesus?

Place: BLCC

Date: 10/8/17

Text: Acts 7-9

CT: Jesus is our personal savior.

[Screen 1]

FAS: Kara Tippetts, an author, mother of four and co-worker with her pastor husband Jason, went home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer. As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was.

As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?

In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God's love on a deeper level. Near the end of her life Kara wrote:

My little body has grown tired of the battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and he will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over his love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.

Blythe Hunt, "Homecoming," Mundane Faithfulness blog (3-22-15)

LS: This is as personal as it gets.

Today is our final week in the series “It’s Personal”. Our heavenly father wants a personal relationship with us all. He wants us to love him more than we want the answers to our questions about Him. If God can be known we must know Him.

We also learned that we must trust Him and come to him as a little child.

And last week we learned that Jesus is undeniable. Yes there are many things about him that may be unexplainable but he is undeniable. He is who he says he is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We learned that to meet Jesus, you need to read and study the Gospels.

Today we are going to find out we don’t have to have all our questions answered about Jesus to follow him. And in no way am I saying your questions are not important.

They just aren’t as important as truly following Jesus is. Something that happened in your past in church or something that is going on now should not keep you from following Jesus. Something will happen or has already happened that will shrink all the questions you have about Christianity and Jesus.

Here are the questions you might ask me if we got together to talk about your future, your salvation. [Board]

What about?

Why would?

These are the questions you would ask me about if we sat down and talked about you wanting to be a Christian or follow Jesus. You would want to know all kinds of things about God and Jesus. The problem is I wouldn’t be able to answer these questions for you to suit you. There are all kinds of books you could read that would attempt to answer these two questions.

But you wouldn’t be any closer to following Jesus if you read them. These two questions are important but they are not the ones we need to ask. If you are looking to come back to Jesus or you are looking to follow him for the first time I would like for you to put aside these two questions and ask these. [Board]

Who is?

What happened?

If you wrestle with these two questions you will get closer to God.

Christianity is not based on ideas or theology; it is built on events that actually took place in history about 2000 years ago.

But the main question you have to answer to follow Jesus is who is Jesus.

Who is Jesus?

If you are at all serious about truly following Jesus you have to answer these two questions. These are the questions that are the foundation of Christianity.

They make it personal. [Screen 2]