What If

What if there is an ultimate purpose in life?

What if all this inhaling and exhaling day after day, month after month, year after weary year…

What if all this working, building, growing, and aging which ultimately leads to death…

Could actually lead to life?

Everlasting Life?

What if you believed in things you cannot see?

What if there is a choice of forgiveness?

The choice to be forgiven and to forgive?

What if there is that choice?

What if there is someone who created you?

What if he did send his one and only son into the world in ransom for your life?

What if the blood that he shed on the cross covers your sin?  My sin?

What if there is a personal invitation to you from him to have an intimate relationship?

What if the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus?

Would you take the gift?

I mean if it was available?

And you say “Why would a loving God who wants to be a personal friend of mine create people knowing all the hurt, tragedy, and pain they would go through?

Why would a loving God allow people to suffer?  Die?

Why would he allow bad things to happen to good people?

Why would I believe in a God like that?

Why would I want to?

How could that possibly benefit me?

Why when he is so powerful and could stop all of my pain and problems, but stands by watching and allows it to continue? 

Why?

And I’m thinking so true.

We could all do without the pain.

Tragedy.

Hurt

Sorrow.

Way too much pain.

And I say “Why?”

“Why God?”

But…

What if all this pain was not God’s plan.

What if there was a perfect garden?

What if he created man in his image to live and walk with him, in the garden, in the beginning?

And what if since we are created like him and he had the choice to create or not to create us…

Created us with choice?

A choice to walk with him and have perfect, unflawed, and fulfilling relationship with him free and pleasant and perfect in a perfect garden…

And what if he wasn’t forcing man to be there with him in the garden?

What if he was teaching man what was beneficial for his life and the things he needed for life to the fullest?

And what if the decision to follow or turn away was not God’s but man’s?

And what if man in his free choice, free will, began the destruction process on his own?

What if the hurt, pain, grief, sickness, sorrow, tragedy, trauma, destruction of life was something we brought on ourselves?

And what if it completely wasn’t us alone?

What if there was an enemy? 

There always seems to be an enemy.

What if there was a bad guy?

A bully?

A villain?

A darkside?

What if even though we don’t choose to naturally follow our creator with our whole heart we aren’t the evil one?

What if there is an ultimate battle being fought for our lives?

What if there is a good and prosperous plan for our lives?

And what if there is a plan for the destruction of our life?

What if…..

What if there is more than meets the eye?

What if we only see a small portion of the big picture?

What if life is a journey?

And what if you walking down life’s path come to a fork in the road?

What if you do have a choice to make?

A choice of love or hate…

Belief or unbelief…

Faith or human thinking…

Forgiveness or bitterness…

Peace or anger…

Surrender to a higher power or self…

Change or comfort…

Stepping out or staying put…

Victory or defeat…

A choice of blessing or curses…

A choice of a Savior or Satan…

And ultimately a choice of life or death.

And what if even though in our small human mind it doesn’t make sense…

We choose life.

A different life.

An eternal life.

And what if in that choice we found a man named Jesus who took our place?

What if this man named Jesus was like a bridge between the broken relationship between humans and God?

And what if he saw the decision and the nature of man turning on God…

He saw the consequences it caused…

Hurt

Grief

Brokenness

Sorrow

Anger

Defeat

Pain

Sadness

Fear

And what if he knew that the enemy would come to those helpless humans, us, and

Trick

Divide

Divorce

Lie

Cheat

Addict

Threaten

Murder

Coheres

Perverse

Mankind?

And what if in seeing all this he chose to come for us?

What if God came to earth as a man with human skin on for us?

What if he came for us in the pain?

What if there is a plan B for our fragmented fallen lives?

What if a Savior called Jesus came for you?

Because the world has caused you trouble…

And you’ve caused yourself trouble…

And there is an enemy battling for your soul and your destruction…

 What if Jesus stepped down from heaven and into earth?

Was born

Lived

Lived as a man

Lived and walked the earth as a man

Lived and walked the earth as a man feeling all things humans feel and experiencing all thing humans experience

But with one difference

He was perfect

He overcame sin

He walked, lived, felt, and experienced life

And remained perfect

What if he did this all along knowing he had to die?

What if his death was immanent in order to give humankind a way out of the worldly, human, and satanic way of living?

What if he knew all along and came anyway?

What if he not only came and lived perfectly in a corrupted world but…

What if he died?

What if he was beaten horrifically until he was unrecognizable?

What if the blood loss he endured that day was off the charts medically?

What if he was teasingingly mocked and inhumanly spit on?

What if iron spikes were pounded into his hands on either side?

What if his feet were placed one on top of the other and another iron spike was driven into them as well?

What if someone took the time to shape a crown of thorns together into a circular headpiece and pushed the prickly points into his skull mockingly as a crown?

What if they spit at him, mocked him, took his clothes and auctioned them off as a joke, and then posted a sign over his bleeding and mangled body that read “King of the Jews?”

What if during this entire horrifying and graphic nightmare you were on his mind?

What if the blood that flowed from him that day covers your sin?

What if there is that kind of love?

What if there is that kind of selfless sacrifice?

What if there is a way that we never dreamed could be?

What if what he did that day on the cross was for you?

Was for me?

What if he loved the whole world from beginning to end all people who have ever of will ever live on this planet so much that he gave his son like that for us?

For us all.

And what if as if his perfect life example, pure shed blood, and sacrificial death taking our place was not enough…

What if he defeated the enemy?

What if he stole the keys to death from Hades?

What if he traveled to the pit of hell and made an unexpected visit to the dark side, avenged his people, and demanded the enemy hand the death keys over?

What if he did that?

And what if he didn’t stay dead?

What if he overcame death?

What if he came back to life?

What if there is more?

What if he came back to say it is finished and now I am going away to prepare a place for you, a place like the garden we once shared?

I’m going away to make paradise for you.

Because in the bible it does say that.

There have been prophets, gods, leaders, good people, that people have followed …

Through cultures…

Through generations…

Through history…

They died.

But Jesus was different.

He came back to life.

And gave a continuing promise of eternal life.

And his eventual return to earth one day.

But what if after all that he still didn’t force himself on us?

What if we still had a choice?

A choice to choose Jesus or not?

What if his plan for you is to be saved by his loving grace?

But what if that decision is yours?

What if in one way or another we all while we live and breathe on this planet have a most important choice to make?

Amongst all the inhaling and exhaling, day after day, year after year, while working and slaving, building, growing, and aging we have a choice to make?

What if you were going to die today?

What if the inhaling and exhaling inside your lungs would all come to an end in the next 24 hours?

Would the priority of the choice change?

Would the relevance of the choice become clear?

Would a decision be top priority?

Would your fork in the road lifestyle lead to an obvious choice of path preference?

What if the choice affects everything?

What if the decision changes everything?

What if everything in your life desperately needs to be changed?

What if you are desperate for change?

What if you dare to step in faith and believe there is more?

What if this is the most important decision you will ever make?

What if it were?

What would you choose?