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God loved that porn actress & porn actor.

God loved my child molesting father.

God loved my ex-wife.

God loved me.

And His grace was sufficient to save us all.

And His death on the cross saved me.

I walked into my apartment, fell to my knees and I prayed:

Dear God,

I suck at this. I suck at living this life You have given me. I have pissed it all away. I don’t know what I am doing.

The best I can do with my life: lust, hatred, divorce, anger, bitterness… I lay it at Your feet. I cannot handle it anymore.

My life is Yours. Take it now.

I don’t know if You can fix me a piece of shit like me. I don’t want to go on living if I have to live without You. But if You can use this piece of crap, then I am Yours forever.

You tell me what I need to do and I will not flinch. My life is only worth something if I am serving You alone.

I don’t cared about being healed. I don’t care about being made whole. I don’t care about being made righteous. I don’t care about being made holy.

All I want is to serve You. All I want to do is to love You.

I am not moving without You.

Take me.

Wouldn’t you know?

God reached down and with one touch, He shattered every chain that wrapped around me. God reached for my heart and made it new. God healed me from all the shames, guilts and wounds I carried. God reached down, picked me up and love on me like nobody else could.

In other words, I don’t wrestle with lust. I don’t wrestle with porn. When I gave it all up to God, everything that I struggled with, everything, He took it from me and simply took care of it.

I have not seen a nude body in one year. I saw the back of a lingerie catalog and it was like I was 10 years old. Like I have never seen a nude or even semi-nude female body before. I knew that sight was going to be reserved for whomever my wife will be if it is God’s will for me to marry again.

It is not like God did a reset on me. It is that God made me a new being all over again.

You want to know what’s better than that?

God took this piece of trash and the very best that I can possibly do and turned into into what He does best: receiving all the glory. No one else can possible lay claim to what He has done in my life.

For God is the only one who heals.

For God alone is righteous.

For God alone is holy.

For God alone is worthy of all of our praise.

For God alone is good.

If you have read this series this far, don’t think for a second that God is too small or too aloof to make you complete and new and heal you from all of your wounds.

Jeremiah 32:27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?

The answer to that would be an astounding “No”.

Let me tell you about my God.

My God is the Creator of heaven, earth and hell.  He created the all the gorgeous landscapes, the water we drink, the dirt beneath our feet and the air we breathe.  He created all the creatures of the land and the sea, the birds in the air and even the creepy crawly things under the ground.

God also lovingly created you and me, male and female in His image and likeness with value, worth and purpose.  He created us, living, breathing, feeling, intelligent human beings with a will to freely choose.  God then set eternity into our hearts in order that we worship Him by enjoying Him forever.

However, in our own folly, by birth and by choice, we instead chose to worship created things and people and places and ideas rather than the God in heaven.  Our original parents, Adam and Eve, fell for the false preaching of Satan in that we can be own god and that we can worship ourselves, save ourselves and live independently apart from God.

It was in that fall that we replaced God with ourselves and whatever else we wanted to worship rather than God.  In essence, we substituted the Creator for created things.

But God was not phased by this at all.  From eternity past to eternity future, He already set forth the plan in motion to bring those who would trust in Him back to Him.

That is when the Son of God, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, came into human history as a little bitty baby born to a unwed teenage virgin girl named Mary in some po’dunk town of Bethlehem.  A carpenter named Joseph married this teenage girl while she was knocked up with a kid that wasn’t even his and then proceeds to adopt this baby boy.

Jesus grew up and lived the perfect life that we should have lived, though he faced the same trials, tribulations, heartbreaks and temptations as we do in every way.

From the eternal glory of Heaven, Jesus came down to this broken world as a missionary from heaven to do one thing: do whatever it takes to bring His people back to Himself.  He was going to do it all in order restore everything back to beginning of creation.

He will do it all for the sake of His name and for His glory alone.

He is called Son of Man because while he was fully God, he was also fully man.

He is called the Good Shepherd because only the Good Shepherd lays his life down for His sheep.

He is called Son of God for He fully submits Himself to the will of His Father by the power of His Holy Spirit.

He is called Immanuel because He is God who is with us.

He is called I Am because even before all of creation and after this world burns away, He is God.

He always knew who you are.  Knew you so well, he knows the number of hairs on your head.

He always loved you.  Loved you so much, that nothing was going to stop Him from carrying out His mission.

He was the only one who is God that could become man to dwell among us.

He was the only one that was able to save us by living the perfect life.

He was the only one whom was willing to save us because he would be the ultimate sacrifice for all of mankind.

He assumed all of our obligations.

Because of our sins, our wrongdoings and our iniquities, we are forever separated from God.  For our sins, One would have to pay the price in order for us to be saved to God.

Jesus Christ knew us well.  He knew our failures, our sins, the things that have happened to us, the lies we believe, everything about us.  Yet, He loves us so much.

He loves us so much.

For all of those who would change their minds about about their sins and confess that Jesus Christ is their Lord and their God, Jesus Christ mindfully remembers and dwells on each of our sins and proceeds to give His life up as ransom as a sheep to be slaughtered.

He thinks of those who would call on His name for to be saved and allows His back to be cut up like raw beef, His beard to be ripped off of his face, a crown of thorns torn into his skull, spit upon, mocked at, stripped naked and after all of that, bear a heavy wooden cross up a hill.

He remembers how far His people are from Him and he lets 13 inch spikes nailed through his hands and feet to be nailed to a cross.

He knows those who would cry out in desperation and he hung himself on that tree as his body poured out sweat, blood, tears, urine and feces.  A spear was pierced through his ribcage as water and blood poured out of his broken heart.

He cries out to the Father in heaven, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they have done”.  In one moment of weakness, he thirsts as someone takes a sponge that was used as toilet paper soaked with urine, feces and vinegar shoves it to the mouth of Christ as Christ preaches his last sermon and ultimately declares, “It is finished!”.  At this moment, the Father pours His wrath out to kill His only begotten son.

For our sins.

For only those who would know Him as Lord and God over their lives.

But…

Jesus Christ, being perfect in righteousness only stayed dead for 3 days.  He went into the ground taking all of my sins that I committed as a sinner and all the sins committed against me.

It was upon His finished work on the cross that He absorbed the wrath of God that was meant for me and wiped away all my sins that I could not do on my own no matter how good I thought I was or how much I helped others or how often I went to church or how often I prayed or all the good works that I have done.

He died the death that I should have died.

He rose from the grave so that I might be fully alive.

For those have been saved by God and trust in His Son, we are commissioned to do one thing: by the power and might of His Spirit, to go to the ends of the earth and tell others about this amazingly good news that there is a God that does not demand for you to a bunch of things to please Him but rather, He is the one who passionately, relentlessly pursues you.

And now, my Savior, Jesus Christ, rules and reigns over every square inch of creation.

That means everything. Every religion. Every thought.  Every idea.  Every government. Every king. Every leader.  Every race. Every tongue. Every tribe. Every color. Every neighborhood. Every home. Every yard. Every street corner. All those living and all those whom died.

He is simply King of kings and Lord of lords.

He will return one day to judge the living and the dead.

There will be those who stand proudly with their heads held high and will say, “Look at all the good things I have done in your name.  Look how much money I gave.  Look at what I did.  I am good enough to be with you.”

To them, He will dismiss them because He never knew them.

But there will be those who dare not lift their eyes upon Him.  Those who would cry rivers of tears in their despair.  Those who would have their hearts broken over the evil in their own hearts.  In their life, they were complete sinners.  They were the worst of the worst.  Yet, in complete anguish, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!”  They, too, will stand before their Lord and adamantly declared, “Lord, I have done nothing to save myself.  The only thing that can save me is the blood that You shed on the cross.  You are my only hope.  You are the only one who could have saved me.  I had nothing but You alone.”

It is then, for those who called upon Christ as their Lord, that Jesus will lift up even the lowliest person and bring Him face to face and tenderly declares, “You are mine. You are mine. I love you. I always have loved you and I will always will love you.  You get to be with me and I will be with You and nothing could have or ever will separate us. I love you.”

You ask me, “What do I believe?”.  That is what I believe. I believe in Jesus.