Imperfect Progress Titles

This year has been absolutely insane! And now I am crossing a threshold that I have dreamed about my whole life. I become a published author on October 1st!! Consider joining me for one of the two book launch parties:

• Virtual Party: https://fb.me/e/IJHOMzy7
• In-Person Party: https://fb.me/e/2K9WG3F6T

Over the next several days, I will post excerpts from the book to give you an idea of what is coming. Today I am starting with my absolute favorite; no saving the best for last here! This is from the back of the book, where I wanted to leave readers with a clear picture of the Gospel.

God’s Epic Story

Before there was anything, there was God.[1] Then He spoke, and His words became reality.[2] His story was perfect. Man and woman existed in perfect harmony, image-bearers of their creator, God.[3]

In His story, we lived in perfect relationship with all things:

• We lived in harmony with God, walking and speaking with Him openly.[4]
• We lived in harmony with one another, “naked and unashamed” because we had nothing to hide.[5]
• We lived in harmony with ourselves, understanding our role as image bearers and free of shame, guilt, pain, or heartache.^[6]
• We lived in harmony with nature; our role in the story was to tend and care for the world.[7]

But, like every epic story, this was only a beginning. The antagonist of our story came and made us question if life was truly perfect. Satan offered Adam and Eve a choice: to continue trusting in the goodness of God’s story or to take control and rewrite the story with themselves at the center.[8] They chose self, and we have been doing the same ever since.[9]

We reach for self-preservation rather than sacrifice and self-gratification rather than love. It is this desire to establish our identity and worth in what we define as good, apart from a relationship with our Maker, that the Bible calls idolatry. A simple definition of idolatry is the worship of created things rather than our Creator God.[10] Idolatry always results in sin, meaning we miss the mark of God’s design.[11]

Sin destroys the four relationships God created in perfect harmony:

• Sin strips us of intimacy with God.[12] His perfection cannot be with sin; his holiness would utterly destroy us. We live separated from God now and without hope or rest in the afterlife, forever separated from the Giver of all good things.[13]
• Sin steals our peace with one another as we jostle and compete for the leading role in this story.[14] Nations rage and war with one another.[15] Individuals lie, cheat, steal, abuse, and use one another in our constant need for more.[16]
• Sin destroys our relationship with ourselves.[17] Because we cannot measure up to our design, as bearers of God’s image, we ache with a longing we cannot understand or satisfy. We try in vain to fill the insatiable void within us with sex, drugs, food, social media, money, or anything else we can get our hands on. What promises to satisfy only leaves us broken, ashamed, and empty.[18]
• Sin corrupts nature;[19] our world is no longer a paradise.[20] We destroy creation by fighting to be at the center of the story.[21] Instead of cultivating the world God created for us, we mishandle, exploit, strip of resources, and destroy nature in our insatiable quest for more.[22]

There is still hope. God spoke in the garden, in the moment of our original sin, of His promised champion.[23] He sent prophets and teachers throughout the Old Testament to prepare our hearts for His coming Messiah.[24] Then He did the unthinkable: He stepped into the brokenness of our story.

God became human, as Jesus of Nazareth. He stepped out of Heaven, humbled Himself to don human flesh, and lived among us in our broken world.[25] He loves us so much,[26] and wants us to know His love personally, so the Creator of all things took on a body susceptible to pain, heartache, brokenness, and death.[27]

Jesus modeled for us what a true image-bearer looks like. He showed us how to live in perfect relationship with God, each other, ourselves, and nature. He taught us to pray for God’s kingdom to come to earth and showed us how to live out His work of restoration.

Then He went further. After living the perfect life we cannot live, he took on the death we each deserve.[28] Jesus became like us so that we could become like Him.[29] After a sinless life,[30] He swapped places with us, dying a brutal death on a Roman cross.[31] In His sacrifice, He paid the debt we could never pay[32] and purchased for us the eternal life that we do not deserve.[33]

But death had no right to Jesus and could not hold Him long. In the ultimate plot twist, Jesus wrested the keys of hell from death and rose from the grave.[34] Through His death, we find forgiveness for our sin. In His resurrection, we receive the power to restore the brokenness that sin brought into the world.

God does not force this choice on any of us.[35] Jesus paid the debt; we must choose to accept His gift of freedom and salvation. In doing so, He reconnects our hearts to the heart of our Creator, and we become new beings.[36] We have no role in our salvation;[37] it’s not about the good works we can do.[38] We bring our brokenness to Him and He makes us whole.[39]

From our new identity, through the power of the Holy Spirit, He empowers us to join in God’s work of reconciliation:[40]

• We have restored intimacy with God. [41] Jesus strips away the sin separating us from God, allowing us to live in harmony with God and look forward to an eternity in His presence. [42] We work to restore others to relationship with God by sharing this Good News with others.[43]
• We have peace with one another.[44] No longer in competition for the role of protagonist, we encourage, support, and collaborate with one another. Considering God’s forgiveness, we forgive others.[45] This mosaic of generations, ethnicities, and cultures finds unified purpose in His story of reconciliation.[46]
• We live at peace with ourselves.[47] We are no longer left wallowing in condemnation and shame, seeking something to fill the void inside. God wiped our slate clean and empowers us to imitate Jesus in living as image-bearers of the divine God.[48]
• We restore nature.[49] We recognize our responsibility to steward God’s creation and collaborate to restore, nurture, and care for the natural world.[50]

The Good News of the Gospel is not that God will snatch us away from this dreadful place called earth. The Good News is that, through His people, God is telling a new story that is restoring our world right now.

Throughout the 30 days of Writing Your Story With God we examined the story God is writing with your life. When we zoom out, we realize your story is only one subplot in the epic adventure that He is writing in the World. This is His story of redemption, of old things becoming new, and of dead things coming back to life. This is the story of you, His image-bearing creation, realizing who He created you to be and partnering with Him to live your purpose of restoring humanity to God’s original design.

The Author of the greatest story ever told is inviting you to play a part in this unfolding plot of redemption. However, it is your choice to accept this invitation. To do so, simply cry out, “Jesus, rescue me.”[51] Confess your need for Jesus’ death to forgive your sins and His resurrection to empower your restoration. Jump wholeheartedly into His mission of reconciliation and choose to make Him the Author of your story from this day forward.

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• Scripture quotations in these footnotes are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
• [1] Genesis 1:1a – “In the Beginning, God…”
• [2] Genesis 1:3 – “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Emphasis added)
• [3] Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
• [4] God speaks to Adam directly throughout Genesis 2. Genesis 3:8, implies He walked with God at a set time daily.
• [5] Genesis 2:25 – “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
• [6] Genesis 2:25 – “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Emphasis added)
• [7] Genesis 2:15 – “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
• [8] Genesis 3:4-5 – “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Emphasis added)
• [9] Genesis 3:6 – “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
• [10] Romans 1:22-25 – “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Emphasis added)
• [11] Romans 3:23 – “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Emphasis added)
• [12] Genesis 3:8b-10 – “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’”
• [13] Isaiah 59:2 – “but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”
• [14] Genesis 3:7 – “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Before they were confronted by God, shame was already creating distance between Adam and Eve.
• [15] James 4:1-2 – “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.”
• [16] Romans 1:28-32 – “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” When God is not the standard, our behavior toward each other is destructive.
• [17] Psalm 38 – David describes the physical and emotional toll of his sin.
• [18] Galatians 5:19-21 – “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
• [19] Isaiah 24:5 – “The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.”
• [20] Genesis 3:17b-18 – “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.”
• [21] Genesis 6:11-12 – “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.”
• [22] Romans 8:20-22 – “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
• [23] Genesis 3:15b – (to the serpent) “…[Jesus] shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (This is the first prophesy of Jesus.)
• [24] John 5:39-40 – (Jesus to the religious leaders) “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
• [25] John 1:15 – “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
• [26] John 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
• [27] Philippians 2:5-8 – “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
• [28] 1 Corinthians 15:22 – “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
• [29] 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
• [30] Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
• [31] Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• [32] Isaiah 53:5-6 – “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
• [33] Romans 5:12,18-19 – “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned … Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
• [34] 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 – “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”
• [35] John 3:36 – “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
• [36] 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
• [37] Romans 5:8 – “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Emphasis added)
• [38] 2 Timothy 1:9 – “who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,” (Emphasis added)
• [39] Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Emphasis added)
• [40] 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” (Emphasis added)
• [41] Romans 8:38-39 – “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
• [42] Ephesians 2:14-16 – “ For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
• [43] Matthew 28:19-20 – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
• [44] Luke 6:27-28 – “…Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
• [45] Ephesians 4:31-32 – “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
• [46] Galatians 3:27-28 – “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
• [47] 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
• [48] Romans 8:1-2 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Emphasis added)
• [49] Colossians 1:19-20 – “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Emphasis added)
• [50] Mark 16:15 – “And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” (Emphasis added)
• [51] Romans 10:9-10 – “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Emphasis added)