The Message

Too many people shrink back at the mere suggestion of Christianity. They have been exposed to a long list of commandments and a long line of fanatics who made the truth sound like the curse instead of the blessing. Instead of receiving an encounter with God as the most exciting thing imaginable, they fear the end of their lives and all happiness and imagine a life of austerity, boredom, sacrifice and lifeless­ness. Christianity has often been identified with the old, untalented and those unable to do anything else in the world. Christianity has been labeled a crutch, a delusion, a hang-up and an escape. But God is not an escape--He is a direct encounter with reality. Actually, Jesus and the Word of God cannot be accurately measured by the stale and almost profane presentation of the people who have claimed to represent Christianity over the last few hundred years. The faith has been in a steady decline, and the Scriptures speak of those who will profess Him with their mouths but with their deeds deny Him. True Christianity in no way will ever be compatible with the ways of the world; Jesus is a true revolutionary in the most genuine sense of the word. Yet we have heard few sermons on Him personally. The real Jesus Christ has been misplaced somewhere in the sermon manuals. Your "profession of faith" is not made just once in a walk down a church aisle--it should be made every day of your life as you walk among all mankind on this planet. And Jesus did not reveal a super pious show of religion. Too many of us have preconceived ideas about how to "act" religious; we are haunted by the religious images of the old movie versions of "Song of Bernadette" or the "Bells of St. Mary's" --but the real Jesus had no trained choir singing in the background. Our wilted, pathetic visions of what is really "of God" are bound up in the cracking mortar of a dying, organized church."Christianity has been labeled
a crutch, a delusion, a hang-up,
and an escape."Jesus is real, with real blood and real hunger and real thirst and real tears and real suffering. He had no ring or halo around His head. He wept; He suffered: He thirsted; He bled; He was tired; He was hungry; He was tempted. When the nails hit His hand--they hit real blood vessels and real blood. Jesus is not a depersonalized religious serum against sin that you must accept like an antidote for snake venom. He is a real, loving, compassionate soul, made like us with a heart. Of His own free will, He laid down His life for us--we so unworthy and unacceptable--so dark and foul--so dank and unloving--soiled and sordid by darkness--tainted beyond original spiritual recognition--barely identifiable as once the pure creations of God walking in a garden of paradise with full dominion over the earth--sovereigns by gift, not by theft--moving in unity and love in purity with the mist of the morning-- with a heart as warm as the giant sun--and love as flowing as the crystal streams. Undefiled and pure--the Adam of His Creation--bound to Him by love. A love that was only destructible--that was only vulnerable through one commodity--Pride. Now, the breaking of this pride will enable you to hear and receive this clear, crystal of Absolute Truth.