Tonight at youth group, Brandon started off the night doing a very interesting activity. He passed around a stack of papers that said on the top, “Who is Jesus?” with the rest of the page blank. He gave us all the opportunity to write on the page everything we knew about Jesus. The only kicker is that we couldn’t use our Bibles.

This activity proved to be a very awesome and eye-opening opportunity for me.

I have grown up going to church literally before I was even born. After I was born, my mom worked in a church office and would put me in my car seat, and I would sit on her desk while she worked. Church was a common thing. When I got to be old enough to go to school, my parents made the huge sacrifice of putting me through private, christian school my whole life. Christianity was and is something I understand. Knowing who Jesus is/was is not a hard thing for me. I was able to write out the list pretty easily. But, putting thought into the truth of who he was and what that meant for my heart proved to be difficult. While the answers come easy, sometimes believing what he does and making that a reality in my life is hard.

On that list, I included things such as:

• Jesus is God
• Jesus defeated death and sin on the cross through the resurrection.
• Jesus broke down the wall of hostility so that now Jews, gentiles, male, female, etc. can be saved and redeemed and have salvation. 
• Jesus was the Lamb of God whose blood was shed so that we can have life. 
• Jesus brings the person who was dead in their sin to life, able now to be counted as righteousness and able to now sit with him as heirs to the kingdom at his right hand on high.  (Ephesians 2)
• Jesus is so faithful and perfect
• Jesus did miracles and has all the power of the Father because he is 100% God. He willingly chose to humble himself as a human so that he could be an acceptable sacrifice for our sin. 

As I sat there thinking through all of those things, I looked at that list and realized what a HUGE gift I have in Jesus. Not only did he do those things to save humanity from their eternal destination because of all the sins they have committed, but he died and rose again and defeated death and sin so that I could defeat the sin in my life now. He did those things so that I could live a life of freedom. He did those things so that I could share the wonderful love and grace that he lavished on me with other people. He did those things so that I could help others defeat that sin and the power it has over them. He did those things so that I could become one with Him and love Him with everything I have.

“Who Jesus is” is not a light thing. He is God. He is omnipotent…ALL-POWERFUL!

If I am a believer in Him and say that I am living my life modeled after Him, I need to start believing and living out the truth of the list that I had written on that sheet of paper. Those truths better become evident in my life because if His grace has been lavished upon me, the least I could do would be to live those things out for His glory.

To Be Continued… =)