Tribe of Judah

There have been some amazing things happening at my church the last few weeks. I have wanted to talk about these things with each of you, but I never really knew how to approach it. And besides, you all know that I can get pretty serious at work. :-) So here goes...

As most of you know to some degree I am Christian. The denomination and title don't really matter. But it is important to understand what my faith is in. I think that because we come from a fundamentally Christian background/country that we get so accustomed to hearing the names 'God' and 'Jesus' and various events that happened, that people feel they know enough of the 'religion'. But have ears to hear. Our faith is that there is one true God. And He is the same God as the Jewish people knew. He is the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt, famously parting the Red Sea. Because of what happened in the Garden of Eden, the direct and intimate relationship between humans and God had been broken, as sin had entered into humanity. Christians believe that the only Son of God, Jesus, became human and lived here on earth, subject to the same problems that every human faces. And in his life, he lived without sin, and offered himself as a sacrifice for mankind's sin by his death. The act of animal sacrifice was used in those days to cleanse a person of their sin. The sin would symbolically transferred from the person to the animal, conveying the sin to the sacrifice, before it was put to death. In the same way, the sin of all humanity, including the sin of future humanity was taken by the sacrifice of Jesus. As a result, our relationship with God is reconnected and our relationship with God is reconciled. A relationship with God where we can see for ourselves that God is real, loves us and can have a real influence on our lives.

First there is a korean girl in my church. She was the only christian in her family and really wants her family to come to know God. Her father was diagnosed with advanced cancer in his kidneys. The doctor put him under surgery to remove the kidney. I presume this was an attempt to stop the spread of the cancer. During this time, she was praying that her dad would accept and believe in God, because she didn't want him to die without knowing God. The surgery went fine. However when they went to confirm the cancer with tests on the removed kidney, they found no sign of cancer. He was miraculously healed! You might say, the doctor must have made a mistake, but I believe he would have had very good evidence of cancer before he would go around removing a kidney. Sometimes we hear stories of miracles and they can seem so unconnected to us that we dismiss it as fiction. But Nam Ju is real. Her father is real. And you know who I am.

Secondly, ...removed because inappropriate for this public forum... This isn't to scare you, but to show you that there are things which we say are not possible, but are in fact realities.

There is a heaven and and a hell. Life isn't just about doing good. It is not just about another religion, ultimately leading to the same thing. It does matter who you stand for and whom your faith is in.

For those of you who have thought that there was no God, I hope this has made you think again.
For those of you who know God, I hope this has increased your desire to know more of Him.