Last week, I had the privilege to share the gospel with a group of people at our Daily Rest. This is what I told them…

I’ve discovered over the years that when you talk to people about spiritual things, you’ll find that some of them have no interest in religion or God. When you ask them why that is so, they often respond with, “Christianity has too many rules and regulations, too many do’s and don’ts. I just want to be free and not tied down to anything.” What you always find as you probe further into their lives, is that the reason they don’t worship God is because they are worshiping someone or something else.

You see, that is the way we are wired. We will worship someone or something. If it isn’t God, then it will be something else. And that something else will be the thing that we serve, the thing that we are a slave to.

That leads us to a question that we all have to ask ourselves, “Why would I want to worship God?”

For Christians, the answer to that question is the Gospel, which literally means The Good News. A challenge I have found is that explaining the Gospel can sometimes seem complicated or mysterious. However, a few years ago, I heard the Gospel explained in 12 words, actually 3 four word phrases. Here it is…

We lost it all,
He did it all,
We get it all.

Pretty simple, easy to understand, and remember. Although some detail about each phrase helps to make sense of them. Then when you say those 12 words, it answers the question of why we would want to worship God.

We lost it all. We know from the Bible that when God created the heavens and the earth, he also created the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. God’s creation was perfect, including these two people. They were given a perfect creation to enjoy. God had just one law for them. There was a tree in their garden and they were not to eat the fruit from that tree. Well, if you are familiar with the story, we know that Adam and Eve ate from that tree and broke God’s law. As a result, because God is perfect and a just God, there were consequences for doing what they did. Adam and Eve were no longer perfect, they could get diseases and die, and in fact the entire creation was no longer perfect. We live in a broken world and we are broken people. We literally lost it all, in fact we lost perfection.

He did it all. Fortunately God had a plan, because He wanted mankind to be able to be with Him in heaven one day. His plan was to send His son, Jesus Christ to earth, to live a perfect life (in fact Jesus is the only person that has ever lived a perfect life) and to die on a cross. In three days He was brought back to life to prove that He, Jesus is God, and then sometime later ascended to heaven, where He waits for us. So, what is the “all” that Jesus did for us? Well, when He died on the cross, He didn’t just die physically, He also took on the punishment for all of the broken laws of God (we call that sin) that all of mankind has committed, past, present, and future. That is the Good News, in fact it is great news, because He did the impossible, something that we cannot do for ourselves.

We get it all. Since Jesus did the hard part, the impossible part that we can’t do, we only have to respond to get it all. This is the easy part… There are just a few simple things that we need to do to obtain eternal life with God. First, we need to acknowledge that we are not perfect and have broken God’s laws, i.e. sinned and we have to tell God we are sorry. When we see sinful things in our lives we have to tell God that we are going to turn away from them with His help. Second, we need to acknowledge that we need a Savior, and that Jesus did it all for us. Finally, we need to take a look at the thing or things that we have been worshiping and say to God that we will no longer worship them, but we are now going to worship Jesus.

That’s the Gospel. We lost it all, He did it all, we get it all.

For those of us that are Christians, we know that it isn’t about rules and regulations, about do’s and don’ts. We have realized the amazing thing that Jesus did for us, something that is impossible for us to do. Because of that we love Him and worship Him and we want to serve Him.

If you aren’t a Christian, I would suggest that you take a look at the thing or things that you worship. Is there anything that you worship that is greater than what Jesus did for you? When you worship things of this world, they are like the mist, here today and gone tomorrow. Only God is eternal, only Jesus can save. Something to think about…

We lost it all, He did it all, we get it all.

Praise God for the Gospel.  Lift up your prayers of thanksgiving to Him for what He did for you.