Have you ever met someone that said they were a good person? Maybe they try to do good things, and would probably say they’re a good person. But will that be enough? Will that person spend eternity in heaven? And the answer is no. No matter how hard you or they try, there isn’t enough good that you can do to earn God’s love or salvation.
We all have sinned. Even the best of us.
since all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God, – Romans 3:23 (AMP)
The good news about all this is that God knew this about us. He knew we’d continually mess up. That we’d never be able to do enough good on our own. And that’s why He planned from the beginning of the world a solution.
Today’s Truth: God loved you enough to do whatever it took to bring you back to Him.
The solution would be something that cost Him everything. And yet, it was worth it to God. Because He loved you and me. He had such a passion to bring us back into right standing with Him that He was ready to pay whatever the cost.
Knowing this helps you see your value. You can begin to realize that even if you’ve missed it and messed up, to God, you’re worth everything. He loves you and gave all He had to help you out of your sin!
We’ve got another summer scripture for you today. Yesterday, we looked at how Adam’s sin brought the curse and death on the world. That’s the bad news.
And there’s even more bad news. Because of Adam’s sin, death spread to each of Adam’s descendants. That means that you and I are sinners.
When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. – Romans 5:12 (NLT)
Realizing that you’re a sinner is an important step in your relationship with God. Not that you spend all day beating yourself up for the ways you fall short, that’s not the point at all. Instead, the point is coming to the realization that you need help to obtain God’s righteousness.
Today’s Truth: You Need Help to Obtain God’s Righteousness
That means that being a good person isn’t enough. As hard as you try to be good, it’s never enough. You need another solution. A better way. And that’s what God himself provided. God in His love cared so much about you, His creation that He made a solution for your sin. What you couldn’t do in your own strength, you didn’t need to do. God Himself was coming to make a way for you to be righteous. Keep on with us, we’ll learn more about that in the upcoming days.
Hopefully, your summer break from your studies has been going well. It’s nice to have a break and have a change of pace from all that studying. While we might break from school work, we shouldn’t take a break this summer from the study of God’s word. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at today’s Bible Verse, or verses, actually!
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” – Genesis 3:17-19
So those are a lot of verses, but here’s the thing, we need them all to realize an important truth. Do you see what God is saying here? He’s saying the world is no longer as He created it, originally. He tells us that the ground is cursed, that thorns and thistles will now come out of the ground, and that one day, each and every one of us will die.
That isn’t really encouraging, is it? But don’t worry, just like any good movie, this isn’t the end. As we’ll read in a few days, God had a plan for man and for the world. That plan gives us hope. But until we get to those verses, let’s take a few moments to think about this, and how what we see in today’s verses can help us share the gospel with others.
Today’s Truth: Bad things aren’t God’s Fault
See sometimes we might have friends who see wars and see some of the terrible things that people do in the world. And they might ask you, how could a loving God allow those things to happen? And as a result, they choose to not put their faith in God. But here’s the thing. God isn’t responsible for the bad things that happen in our world. That’s a result of Adam’s sin. Because of His sin, the world is cursed, it’s not the good place that God originally created.
That’s why we see sickness, death, suffering, and many of the bad things in the world. It’s because our world is fallen and broken. It’s because there’s a real devil out there wanting to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10)
So don’t be afraid to stand up for the truth with your friends. Let them know that the bad stuff that happens isn’t God’s fault, the world simply isn’t the same good place our loving father God originally created.
Over the next week and a half, as a start to your summer break, we’re going to look at some verses that show us our need for a savior and why Jesus came to earth.
So let’s take the next week and look at these scriptures, and if we don’t already know them, then commit them to memory and build our faith together!
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. – Genesis 1:31 (NIV)
Have you ever thought about the fact that when God created the world, everything He created was good? And yes, it’s not still that way (we’ll see why in tomorrow’s verse). But we see in today’s verse that God created the world. Everything we see from the sky to animals is a part of His creation. And it’s so complex and wonderful. The way God created our sky to protect us, the variety in the animals, all of it is simply amazing.
God’s creation is miraculous. Take some time today to look outside and see the amazing things that God created.
Today’s Challenge: See the Miracle of Creation each day.
There’s no way that the complexity, the variety, and the things we see in nature are created without God. Yes, the world isn’t the way God created it because of sin, more to come on that tomorrow, but overall, the world screams there is a creator and that He creates good things for us to enjoy.
It’s getting to be summertime, and we thought it might be fun to do a series over the next week and a half on some scriptures that are pretty foundational to our faith and our salvation. These scriptures outline our need for a savior, Jesus, and why sin is such a big problem without Jesus.
If you haven’t already, consider challenging yourself to memorize these scriptures. Memorizing them really does help you. That way, if you forget your Bible at home one day, or if you’re jogging at track practice, you can think about and recall some scripture to feed your faith.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. – Genesis 1:1 (NIV)
One of the first things you have to settle in your walk with God is that God is the creator. Why is that important? Because as creator, there is no higher power than God. That means that He has the right to call the shots in our world because He was the one who created it.
Today’s Challenge: Look to God as the Creator
Seeing God as your creator is foundational to your faith. If you believe that He created, then it makes sense why He has the right to judge sin. It makes sense why He loved us so much that He wanted to send a savior to the world to redeem us from that sin.
So if you haven’t thought about it much before, determine to begin to see God as the creator of our earth today. Realize that if He created, then He has authority and that instead of using that authority to make you as His creation feel bad for messing up, He decided to love you and extend His mercy to humankind all throughout history.
But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. – Isaiah 40:31
Can you remember a time when you stayed up all night? I recall one time after a mission trip I stayed up all night before heading home. I wanted to spend every minute I could with all my new friends before we said goodbye to each other. After being up all night I was exhausted. The next day, I consumed every type of caffeine I could find to stay awake.
Caffeinated drinks can help you stay awake when you’ve not gotten enough sleep. However, the problem with these drinks is that their effects don’t last. They wake you up for a while, but their effects eventually fade.
The same is true in life. Often there are situations that can make us weary. And in those situations, it’s easy to focus on our problems so much that we’re ready to give up. But is stopping when we’re weary and tired the best solution?
What if we placed our trust in God? What would happen then? I believe you’d find that the problems of life couldn’t keep you down. So today, choose to trust in God. When you do, you’ll find that you have the strength to face difficulties.
Today’s Truth: You can make it because you’ve got God on your side
At school, it always seemed like there were groups. You know, there were the kids that were good at band, or the students that did well at sports, or even the students that did well academically. And it always seemed that there were groups and labels at school. Like you were an athlete, or you were part of this group or that group. As a result, you were often judged and labeled based on who your friends were and what your interests were.
When you get out of high school and move into college, you’re often given a label there too. You’re labeled based on what you study, or as an adult on your career or relationship status.
But here’s the great thing about God, He doesn’t label us.
But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.- John 1:12 (NLT)
There are no groups or labels with God. If you believe in God, and accept Him into your heart, you’re a child of God. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been labeled in the past, with God, you’re simply His child.
And as His child, you’re loved, you’re accepted, and you have value. God sees past what people see and He looks at your heart, and He calls you His!
I’m not perfect. I mess up, daily, ok, let’s be honest, probably hourly. I lose my temper, I let unkind words slip out. There are times when I’m afraid to stand up for Jesus and hide in fear.
And it’s probably safe to say, you might be a little like me. You probably aren’t perfect. You make mistakes and daily fall short of perfection.
Here’s the good news. Perfection isn’t what God requires. In fact, He knew we couldn’t do it, so He sent Jesus to make us perfect through His resurrection.
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. – Hebrews 10:14 (NIV)
God doesn’t require us to be perfect. He requires us to put our trust in Jesus. And when we do, our hearts are turned toward Him.
Today’s Truth: God wants our hearts, not our perfection.
think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths – Proverbs 3:6 (Holman)
Many times we make following God and His plan for our lives really complicated. We try to know exactly what God wants us to do and sometimes don’t move forward on making decisions simply because we’re waiting to hear something from God. God does speak to us in big ways at times in our lives, but many times, following God can just seem ordinary.
This verse gives us some help with following God. It tells us to simply think about God in all our ways. So if you’re eating breakfast, take a minute to think about God. If you’re riding the bus to school, find a minute to think about God. If you’re in the bathroom between classes, take a minute to think about God. If you’ll just take time out of your day to think about God, this verse says that He will guide you.
Following God and hearing from God doesn’t have to be spectacular. It can often just be ordinary. It just takes you being quiet and spending a few minutes thinking about God each day. Just be willing to hear from Him and be sensitive to His leading in each thing you do during the day.
Today’s Truth: Hearing from God is simple, you’ve just got to take a moment out of your day to get quiet and hear from Him.
We can live in a place of joy as Christians. And that doesn’t mean that everything is great. Things might not be going your way. Your friends might not be nice to you right now. The bully on your bus might always be picking on you. However, we can have joy that is independent of circumstances.
Our joy doesn’t come from whether or not everything is going perfectly in our lives. Instead, it comes from a deep relationship with Jesus. Knowing Jesus, and fellowship with Him is where we find joy.
The prospect of the righteous is joy, but the hopes of the wicked come to nothing. – Proverbs 10:28 (NIV)
As people who have been made righteous by God, we can walk in joy. We can know that even on the toughest day, it’s in our relationship with Jesus we find worth, meaning, and true joy.
Today, don’t let circumstances steal your joy. Instead, realize that treasure you have in knowing Jesus. Then choose to let Jesus be your source of joy.
