We just completed our Belief and Being the Church class with our 11-13 year olds at Capricorn Community Church. It was a fabulous foundation-building class full of basics of what it means to be a Christian. Yesterday's lesson wrapped up our series by studying how we stand firm during our Christian walk. We studied Ephesians and the Armor of God.
We were going through the pieces of armor and got to the shoes … fit with the Gospel of peace. Then, I got a question that threw me.
"What's the Gospel?"
I paused.
I was a bit thrown.
Shouldn't they know this?
I asked the rest of the class if they knew.
No one knew what the word Gospel meant.
So, I asked for guesses - "What do you think the word Gospel means?"
I got all sorts of answers. Many thought it was simply the Bible. The whole story of the Bible.
I derailed our lesson for this IMPORTANT TOPIC!
I said, "The Gospel is the story of Jesus. There are 3 parts …
1. It started in the Garden of Eden. They understood this story and that it was when sin entered. Because of sin that entered, someone had to pay for that sin. They replied - JESUS! Yes, Jesus came and lived a perfect life on earth - to show us how imperfect we are and how holy God is. He set us an example of how we're to live while on earth.
2. Jesus was sent by God to pay our sin-price. They said, THE CROSS! Yes, the Cross. Jesus died an undeserved death on the Cross for our sin.
3. This was the tricky part. They didn't know what came next. The most important part … THE RESURRECTION! We talked about the fact that this showed that God/Jesus could and would conquer anything!
THE GOSPEL. The story we, Christians, are to spread.
So simple, yet we often skip right over the whole story.
It's not about rules. It's about THE GOSPEL.
It's about believing it!
Admit you're a sinner.
Believe in Jesus' death and resurrection - atonement for sin.
Commit to the body of Christ and belong to the church!
It's about believing it!
Admit you're a sinner.
Believe in Jesus' death and resurrection - atonement for sin.
Commit to the body of Christ and belong to the church!
A moment of true foundation-building … even if it was just putting all the story pieces together! Was it just semantics or mentally connecting the dots? Whatever it was, the Gospel is now clear!
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