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How to have life's most important relationship!

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Yours For Life:  How to have LIFE's most important relationship!

Two Feelings That Won't Go Away...
We've all felt them...

Someone's Missing

In the lonely moments, you know there's a relationship you don't have that you're supposed to have. But every relationship ultimately leaves you with this hole in your heart. Then there's the other feeling...

Something's Wrong

With my world...with people in my family...with me. There's too much hurt too many masks...too much me first.

Your Creator is the Someone who's missing, because

There's a Relationship You're Created to Have.

Gods book, the Bible, tells us that:

...All things [YOU!] were created by Him [Jesus Christ] and for Him.1

But why am I missing this relationship?

It's a Relationship You Don't Have
Because You've Run Your Own Life.

We were created "for Him." We live "for ourselves."

"Your iniquities [wrongdoings] have separated you from your God." 2

We don't have a relationship with One we were made for because sin has created a gap between us and our Creator.

Sin is the "something wrong" at the root of our selfishness and our dark feelings and it is really explained by its middle letter, "I." Day after day we make more "my way" choices. Because God is 100% sinless, all our "my way" choices have created this grand canyon between us and the Person we were made by and made for.

If we die with that chasm between God and us, it will be there forever, because the wages of sin is death...3 That "death penalty" for running our own lives is the awful price for sin - separation from God now...and forever.

This Death Penalty for Running Our Own Lives Must be Paid!

Religion cannot pay it.
Neither can good living.

"It is by grace you have been saved [from sin], through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast."4

There's nothing you can do to cross the sin-gap.

Your only hope is that God will do something....and He has!

You Can Have a Relationship with God Because of what Jesus Did!

"Christ died for sins...to bring you to God."5

You did the sinning, but Jesus did the dying on His cross. Because He loves you, He paid the death penalty for every wrong thing you've ever done. Then He rose from the dead three days after He died. Jesus is alive!

What you do with Him is the most important decision you will ever make. The missing relationship becomes yours when your sin is erased from God's book.

So how can that happen?

You Have to Choose This Relationship with God.

God did His part when His Son died for you.

Now it's your move.

Your move begins when you

"Repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out...."6

Turning to God means you are also turning from something. As you turn to Jesus, you repent. That means you are willing to put your self-run and sinful life behind you, realizing that Jesus and sin don't belong together.

You are putting all your trust in Jesus to forgive your sins and to give you eternal life.

You're ready for God when you can put your name in the most famous verse in the Bible:

"God so loved (your name) that He gave His one and only Son, that [if]
(your name) believes in Him, [then] (your name) shall not perish, but have eternal life."7

We Must Turn to God in Total Trust.

Believing in Christ is hanging on to Jesus like a drowning person grabbing a lifeguard and saying, "Lord, I'm pinning all my hopes of forgiveness and rescue on you."

When you give yourself to your Savior, the sin-gap is gone forever, and at last you have a personal relationship with the Person you were made by and made for! The missing person is missing no more!

This relationship can be yours for life....and forever!

You can belong to God from today on if you will tell Him with all your heart something like this:

Lord, I've been running my own life, but I resign as of today. I've been living for me. I'm sorry for my sin. I believe Your Son Jesus Christ paid my death penalty when He died on the cross. Right now I'm turning from a life of my way and I'm putting all my trust in Jesus Christ to erase my sin from Your book, to give me a relationship with You, and to get me to heaven. Lord, from today on, I'm Yours.

Bible references: NIV Printed in USA 2001
Written by Ron Hutchcraft 2001 Ron Hutchcraft, All Rights Reserved
Design and illustrations by: Stephen Ravenscraft & David Sobotka
Photos by Jim Whitmer