We are very glad that you are our guest, and we hope that you enjoy our adventures. Our best adventure by far is our relationship with Jesus and we hope that you will discover who He was and is, so that you can enjoy Him too.
Who is Jesus?
The man Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, many things.
He was a great preacher whose words, such as the Sermon on the Mount, still seize human imagination two thousand years later.
He was a healer who worked great miracles, healing the sick, bringing sight to the blind, making the lame to walk again, and even raising the dead.
He was a troublemaker whose criticisms of the powerful and wealthy were matched by his compassion for the weak, vulnerable, and outcasts of society.
He was crucified on a Roman cross as a danger to the Empire as "King of the Jews." This was no accident, because . . .
Jesus was sent by God to die on purpose as the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world by taking upon himself the divine curse of God's wrath.
He is the one whom God raised from the dead after three days in the grave, and who now rules heaven and earth and is present with his people through his Spirit.
He is the one who will one day return, to bring both judgment and mercy.
He is the Christ, the Jewish Messiah: the one to whom dozens of prophecies in the Old Testament point, the fulfillment of all of God's promises to Israel.
He is the divine Son of God. The one and only God-Man.
This man, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died for your sins and ours, in order that we might be saved from sin and judgment by believing in him. By his sacrifice, Jesus brings us, by God's design, into a supremely satisfying joy in God that is beyond anything we can imagine. That's good news. It's called the gospel.
Christian Hedonism
There's even more to this good news. Experiencing pleasure in Jesus Christ is one of the most important things that we can do. Why? Because by taking delight in Jesus, visibly and publicly, we help to show how beautiful and valuable he is. So God's aim for his Son to be honored and our aim to be happy find fulfillment in the same act -- our joy in Jesus. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
It is almost too good to be true that the universal desire to be happy is God-given and good. The problem is, as C. S. Lewis said, "we settle for mudpies in the slum because we cannot imagine what a holiday at the sea is like". Jesus is the holiday at the sea. We exist to help people make that discovery.
We call this pursuit of joy in God "Christian Hedonism." We hope you will see Jesus Christ as the door to your ultimate joy, and that you will open that door and step inside.
But the manger scene is not!
