Michael Ramsden - The Only Home - Is Jesus the only way?

well this is the last time I get to speak to you some of you will be very happy about that idea potentially but I've truly enjoyed myself I hope you have too and that you've also been able to use this time just to take a look at something that we sometimes think we know what is all about this is what Christianity is is what it's all about but it's really interesting as you some of you may have discovered as you come here every day or just maybe just come in once or twice so it's very easy to think you know something to believe you're familiar with it only to discover you're not I'd really quite an interesting experience last week a taxi driver came to pick me up from where my office is which is on Banbury Road and we have a small reception area there you know white people can wait if they need to meet people and we have you know magazines on the small coffee table together with some photo books of Oxford you know so people who are there visiting the city can click through and I came down and the taxi driver who was taking me off to the station you know was looking through one of the picture books of Oxford and as he was driving me he said was it Oxford is a really nice place and I said well how long have you lived here and I think there's about 10 years and I said oh I saw you look in the picture book were you surprised he said yes he says the Oxford College is they're so big and I said well what did you think they were like he said well like take some John's for example so they said it's tiny it has this tiny little door and be what kind of tiny little door and I saw the pictures it's so big behind so I started telling him about what some of the Oxford colleges look like they said really you mean there's like grass and law I mean he was utterly blown away by the idea that basically I mean I even if you took him to Bailey all wouldn't you I mean even is room to pedal he would be blown away by the size of Bailey all and for those of you who know depending if you've been to there or you've studied there you'll realize that's one of the smallest he had no idea and then he said to me do you think if I brought my kids into town they did just outside that they would like looking around some of these colleges when I said well some of them are open to the public best time to go is join exam time you know I'm looking through the windows do whatever you want you know it's absolutely fine but it was interesting he lives in this city he'd write you could ask him to take you anywhere in this city in his car and he'll know exactly what it dropped you off but it took him a decade to actually realize there was something behind all those doors and walls that may actually be of interest or beauty or significance and what other people that would have sight with the Christian faith too we see it from the outside times you may think is something very small or very simple and we even just pass by we don't even notice it but actually if you sometimes stop and you take the trouble to take a look on the inside you can be rather surprised by by what you see and so no matter where you come at this point if you are really interested in taking this further then please do absolutely you'll take away the magazine and that it will uncover a copy of Luke's Gospel where are the QR codes if you zap the QR code with your phone you'll get various video explanation to go some of the text including some by some professors from this University who'll talk to your bet about the other the evidence of the Christian faith or the significance of what you're reading is well and a wonderful resource take it away and use it but the question I have today is about really about exclusivism and about this idea where Jesus basically said if you want to see the Father you have to come through me I am the way the truth and the life and he I can remember once speaking I did a series of why I did like a long evening and this was quite a few years ago now and instead of giving a long talk like I'm about to do now I actually spoke for about eight minutes and then we did three hours of question and answers and so for three hours people could just ask any question and I just stood there whatever questions came up I tried to answer and at the end of our time this lady came up to me and she said look I quite enjoyed this evening but something bothered me and I said well what was that she said well no one asked you directly but you seemed to assume this in all of your answers as well what's that she said well that Jesus Christ is the only way and I said well no that would that would be correct that's what I do think and she said well I I'm a Buddhist and I could never become a Christian you know because that means you're saying other people are wrong and so I looked at her and I said tell me I said them didn't the Buddha say that other people are wrong did not the Buddha say that the Vedas are not a divine revelation from God within Hinduism and didn't he describe the caste system which is central to Hinduism as evil and she looked at me and she said he did say that I read it this morning in my devotions so I said well if you're prepared to follow the Buddha when he says other people are wrong why do you not want to follow Jesus Christ when he says other people may be wrong and she looked at me she said I don't like where this is going and I said well I know this may make you feel uncomfortable and I think there are two different things going on there one is to do with the nature of truth itself and as soon as anyone makes a claim unless it a this is true then they are beginning to exclude certain other things around it just like just automatically so if I were to stand up here today and say I'm now going to give you a talk on why I think all paths lead to God what I'm saying at the same time is that I think those who only think some parsley to God or only one path leads to God or wrong simile if I were to said you look only some parsley to God because I'm not so sure that Genghis Khan had such a great plan of salvation for Humanity so I don't say look only some cars lead to God I'm saying that those who think all parsley to God are only one path lead to God or wrong so no matter how you phrase the claim we're going to exclude someone somewhere what's of more pressing importance is the kind of character is wrapped up Ken it's entirely possible to make truth claims in the most arrogant kind of way and it's entirely possible to present the truth in a very kind kind of way I find Jesus Christ fascinating that he was described as someone full of truth and grace now when you say that someone is graceful what you're saying is that there is a beauty to their physical movement you may have noticed that as I walked up onto this platform when you say that someone is gracious that's what I'm going to be funny if you're if you're saying that someone is gracious you're saying there is a beauty to there in a moral movement and Jesus Christ was described as someone full of truth and grace so it's not so much the fact that claims may be staked which are exclusive or or anything like that there is a very important question here about character which I don't spend a lot of time on suffice to say that we are in desperate need of a world where people are prepared to present truths in a gracious and kind way but also it's just a very function of troops that it will exclude things which contradict it or are an error to it now when we come to belief about um God and stuff like that what we sometimes do because we're aware about not wanting either to pray something which is going to come across wrongly or to try to be as accommodating as we can we we very often come up with pictorial resolutions to very difficult problems I can remember speaking in London a few years ago as a largely military audience in front of me and as soon as I finish everybody looked at the most senior person in the room because obviously with the highest rank I guess everyone thought he should have the first question and he looked at me and he said well if you ask me he said it's like you know climbing a mountain there were all kinds of paths you know to go to the top of the mountain and you're on the Christian path and other people on this path and other people on that path and it doesn't matter what path you on they all go to the top and I looked at this guy and he was much fitter than I am and he looked like the kind of person who might actually climb mountains from time to time and I said to him have you climbed to a top of a mountain and he said yes I have I said when you climb to the top of a mountain and you're standing on the very top can you see where all paths from the base lead and he paused me said no I said where do you need to be standing to see all paths from the bottom lead to the top and he said well up here I said well who's the only person who has that bird's-eye view and he paused again and he said god I thought my question to you is who are you claiming to be when you tell me all paths lead from the bottom to the top and he sat back in his chair any when ah that's look I'm just going to establish which one of us here thinks their God because if your God then I've got questions for you that I would love to have answered right now so sometimes we use pictures that make sense which we think hey this is a very nice sounding way to resolve this issue but at the same time you have to ask yourself who on earth are you claiming to be to be able to assert this with any degree of authority so it is it is a difficult area but what I want to try and do is show to you why it is that what Jesus Christ says is really so completely unique he's not raising a claim on what amongst many he is actually genuinely phrasing something which is unique to him different as a whole other caliber and when it comes to if there is a God if God is there how might we find him now if you take any religious or philosophical system doesn't matter what it is we take any religious or philosophical system you'll see that it's normally rooted or grounded in one of three ways it's either rooted or ground to the customer logically in thinking where the idea is you master a system of thoughts and if you can master that system of thought if you become conversion of those ideas you'll have the keys the tools that you need to unlock the mysteries to life the universe and everything else now other systems are rooted more existentially in feeling where the idea is look engage with the mystical reach out with your feelings hanker after that defining experience that once you have will make sense of who you are why you're here where all of this is going and that's how you can resolve this and other systems are rooted very pragmatically in doing do these things live this way put these principles into effect and if you do and you follow these simple steps you will figure out who you are why you're here life the universe and everything else and as there you'll see different systems rooted in those now some systems root bring all of these things together as a matter of fact in Hinduism there are three hindi words which would translate right thinking right feeling right doing and they're the message very much is you need to get all of those things aligned and if you can pursue all three of those and bring all of them together that is actually what you ultimately need however the Christian faith can't be reduced into any one or even just a simple combination of these things you can't reduce what it means to be a Christian into accepting a certain set of ideas even though there's nothing more profound and coming to know the person of Jesus Christ you cannot reduce the Christian faith into some kind of mystical experience that you may feel even though there is nothing more thrilling or life-changing than meeting him nor canoers use the Christian faith into a set of simple pragmatic steps do this don't do that even though Jesus himself said all Christians should be known by what they do because Jesus Christ did not come into this world to give a simple thoughts about God or to give us a new experience with God or to tell us that we knew to tell us to do new things for God Jesus Christ came into this world as God he claimed it in his very being he revealed the person of God to us now just think about this for a moment sinking our is done through words words others basic tools of thought my words reveal my thoughts to you which is why sometimes we will complain I speak a bit too quickly what they're basically saying is there's not enough time to process the thought I feel this is a very unfair criticism people just need to learn to listen faster and these that's what words do words are revealed thoughts but if you ever pick up the Gospel of John and you read it you'll read that in the beginning was the word and the Word was God and Word was with God he was with God in the beginning through him all things were made and as you read through that you'll also say that it says that the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us a revelation now of the person and a communication from God not on the abstract of ideas but in the very concrete reality of the person of Jesus Christ that is who he is claiming to be that he reveals God to us systems which are rooted in feeling or interest in some kind of moment in life some kind of all defining experience which will somehow make us but interestingly Jesus Christ defined life in terms of knowing him that's why in the Bible it says that in him was life or that if you do not know him you will not see life full-stop in other words Jesus Christ says if you come to meet me this isn't so much an experience in life this is the moment of life itself life truly begins the moment you meet me Jesus Christ did not say hey I've come into this world to take bad people and make them good he actually came to say something far more profound he said I've actually come into this world to take people who were dead and make them alive and if you meet me you will certainly come to know life as you had never known it before I can remember shortly after I became a Christian having lived most of my life in the Middle East I was talking with a Christian was much much shorter than me I was talking to my on the phone the other day and I half jokingly picked him up off the floor so we could have a nice wide conversation and pinned him against a wall and said why haven't you told me about this sooner I said I feel like I've wasted so much of my life up until this point and now for the first time I'm truly alive do you know that life in him that's what it means to become a Christian systems which are rooted in doing tell us that we should I say put certain principles into effect do certain things at one point the people around Jesus came to him and they said teacher what must we do to do the works God requires they phrase a question to Jesus Christ in the plural now he actually replies in the singular the work of God is this to believe in the Baniya assent and they say no no no no no no wait a minute our forefathers because they were Jewish they say our forefathers they ate manna in the desert God sent them it bread from heaven what will you do what miracle will you perform in order to justify yourself to us and Jesus looked at them and said I am the bread of life in asking them what to do they were looking for a way to live in asking Jesus Christ to justify himself they were searching for a path the truth at one point Jesus turned to those around him and said do you want to leave me also and they said master to whom shall return you have the very words of life a way to live a path to truth the words of life and very famously in John chapter 14 Jesus Christ said I am the way the truth and the life I am Hiep rained all of his planes in relationship to his person to himself and this is one of the things which is very unusual about the Christian faith because you can take any other system of thought or religious system remove the founder from it the system will remain so if you're talking about Buddhism for example and you were to go backwards and forwards and it will take a bit of time to get there but if you keep pushing you say look did it has to be the Buddha to give us Buddhism or could it have been anyone the answer will be well theoretically anyone could have achieved this enlightenment and given us the system but historically he was the one who gave it to us but the person of Buddha is not central to the system you can remove him the system is fine you can even do the same in Islam if you ask the question did God have to choose Mohammed in order to do this the answer would be no he could choose anyone but he is the person he chose you can remove the founder from the system the system remains but you cannot remove Christ from Christians if you remove Christ from Christians all you're left with are the letters I am and Ian cannot save you he is the substance of the revelation he came to bring you can't detract his person his being from it because it's all about him this is why one early Christian said didn't say I know what I have believed and I am convinced about it he said I know whom I have believed and stand convinced because it's all about a trust in a person this is why Christians put a lot of emphasis on understanding who is jesus has been the central defining question to determine whether anyone ultimately wants to become a Christian because Jesus Christ is not coming to give us information said about God he is coming as God himself I wonder what you think of him Christians use lots of big word to try to explain what they mean by this they talk about incarnation incarnation means God has now made himself known to us in the person of Jesus at one point Jesus is talking to his disciples and one of them says to him but we don't know where you're going Jesus so how can we know the way and Jesus said if you had known me you would have known my father also and from now on you do know him and you have seen him Philip said to him well Jesus show us him show us the father that will be sufficient and Jesus said have I been with you so long and you don't know who I am if you have seen me you have seen the father the father and I are one believe me when I say that I am in the father and the father is in me do you know who Jesus is in his very nature he is God no other founder of any historical religion is claiming to be God they claim to show the way to teach the way to reveal the way but not to be the way that is who Jesus Christ is he has no peers no competitors there are no equals it is an utterly unique claim to the person of Christ do you know him the Christian faith is rooted in the person and being of Christ in terms of its salvation Jesus Christ came to save sinners that is why his physical on the cross and his bodily resurrection other means by which salvation comes when Jesus Christ goes on to the cross he takes every wrong thought ever every harmful experience every bad thing we've done and all the punishment that it deserves and all the rough that it generates onto into himself into his very being that's why the Bible says when Jesus Christ went across he became sin for us he became a curse for us this is very strong language he became death literally he took our death into himself and then rose to give us life that is why Jesus Christ his being his persons at the very center and if you accept him then he is able through his resurrection to give you a new life and a living hope do you know that kind of hope do you know that kind of life that's what it means to be a Christian if you're sitting here you think being a Christian means you think certain things or you do certain things or you feel certain things you still haven't quite got it being a Christian is encountering the person of Jesus Christ and welcoming him into your life that's why in Christians we also talked so much about transformation about being changed if we are in Christ we literally become new creations in the Gospel of John there's a very famous conversation that Jesus has with someone and Jesus says of all of us literally have to have a new birth we have to be somehow given a birth into this new life that's what it means to become a Christian it's not about giving intellectual assent to something or it's simply experiencing something or promising to lead a good life however noble that is it is about receiving the life that he offers that he brings that he is into ourselves that we truly come alive now when we ask the question Who am I is a very essential question and if you've been listening to Stephen talks in the evening if you haven't listened to the first of the three talks he gave please there's going to be available online I'm sure am i right in saying that you he's he's funnier than me he's more interesting than me he's better-looking than me he's better educated than me I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate him but one of the things you would have noticed all through the evenings as he stood here he would have talked about his own failings his own shortcomings oonh weaknesses and there's a very simple reason for that because when are we asked the question Who am I when I ask that question of myself it's an essential question it demands an essential answer and the trouble is is when we get an essential answer to the question who am i what am I really like inside the answer is not a happy one I don't if any of you have read Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein I haven't seen the movies but I have read the book as usual the book is better thoroughly recommended now Mary Shelley was raised in a Christian home her father was a vicar she rejected her Christian faith she became a very convinced atheist by the age about 21 and then obviously one of Britain's most well-known and well-loved authors and Frankenstein is a fascinating book Frankenstein by the way in case you're confused is not the name of the monster that is created Frankenstein is the name of a doctor doctor Frankenstein who creates life now what he wants to do is he is thinking it must be possible to create life and it takes various body parts he puts them together runs electricity through and it comes to life saying which is amazing and this being this new type of being that is created is actually very kind very benign very gentle very innocent but also ugly big kind ugly helps you to think of me at this point in more detail just go ahead I'm here to be your visual clue now here's what happens as the being that dr. Frankenstein as this new beam watches more human behavior as it reads reads human literature human history as it watches our human interaction and how we treat each other it becomes increasingly confused at one point the monster confronts his creator and says I don't understand this world when I first came into it to be a human being seemed to be the most godlike thing you can imagine he says but the more I look at it the more evil I also see he says to be human at the same time mister be so noble and so vicious and base and then the monster says all I can conclude is this human beings were created in the image of something perfect and they've fallen away from it I however that being says have been created in the image of something imperfect and therefore how greater will my own fault be and from the pen of this atheist is this incredible stunning truth that actually all human beings we are created in God's image that's why we can see these strands of nobility and and greatness but we're also fallen something's gone wrong inside of us this fundamental problem we have is in us now when people hear Christians talk about the fall and the idea that we have a fallen humanity we live in a fallen world we sometimes see it as being very negative somehow a very negative course but please understand this very carefully everyone who I meet in this world especially if I'm talking to leaders around the world they have a desire to do what is right most leaders I meet whether in the corporate space or the political space they they really want to lead life well they just find it very hard and as a matter of fact there's a book in the Bible called Romans and if you read chapter 7 you'll read this guy saying look I don't understand what's going on I have the desire to do what is that good but I just don't do it III in my inner being I delight in God's law and I want to be I want to lead a good life but the things I don't want to do I keep on doing the things I know I should do I'd leave them undone and he's aware of this war was inside him and he's saying who can help me with this and that that describes all of us my eldest daughter was just applied to university and she's now reason why I'm going increasingly gray I was last speaking engaged when I went to where they'd see me last year they said well you die in your hair and I was like it's going white so it's not going darker there's no that's what you mean you look so much whiter than before and it's because having applied to do music and been accepted at every University she applied to she's now thinking do I want to do music and so she isn't sure and so we've been having lots of conversations about that recently but when she was about three is about two years ago and she'd grown her hair all the way down to below the lower part of her back so she had very very long hair and I was going away on a trip and she just said dad you seem to be prepared for a bit of a shock because when I come back my hair's going to be shorter so I realized something big was going on because when I landed at Ito Airport even before I got him home to Oxford my wife rang me and she said Michael when you come home you want to say nothing to Lucy apart from you are beautiful and so I now or later or so I'm knocking on my front door Lucy opens it er has been cut up to here I'm a man under authority I do exactly what I'm told and I smile I say Lucy you look beautiful and that's the end of the conversation but a couple of nights later my wife is part of a smaller Amateur Oxford orchestral group she lose the cello section and it's and she was away at a rehearsal so now I'm alone with my eldest daughter watching TV and I finally have the opportunity to ask the question I've been dying to ask for a long time so I start breathing slowly in and out calm centered you know don't want to come out wrong I smile because you know tone is very important and as casually as I can you know sort of half glancing over I say so Lucy what prompted the change of hairstyle was it was it fashioned if you want to try something new and she said well so I saw this documentary on the TV a couple of months ago about this charity that make wigs for girls who've lost their hair through leukemia and they were saying how hard it was to find hair donors and so while I was away she invited a friend round who was a hairdresser to plat her hair in a special way and tie it up and they had it cut off as high as they could go and then she mailed off her hair to this charity and so they could make wigs for these seven and eight year old girls who had suffered some hair loss to the treatment they were going through and as Lucy said that two of my my my eldest daughter she's been an avid reader from such a young age I mean she was literally ploughing through Jane Austen the age of eight and so Ashley told me this I said to her do you remember reading Little Women and she'd read it and in the book Little Women if you haven't read it there's a scene where the heroine of that novel very fighters feisty brilliant woman called Elizabeth she sells her hair and she buys it gives the money to her mother so her mother can buy a train ticket to visit her father who's dying in a military hospital thousands of miles from home and as she hands over the money to her mother her mother looks at her hair and looks at her and says your hair will regrow but you'll never be more beautiful to me you to me than you are right now and I just eluded you a member reading this book and said yes and that was the only line I could think of and that's what I said to her she sat next to me when we talk about human beings has been fallen it doesn't mean we never see any beauty in the human heart it means that in the same human heart where we see that same beauty we also see anger and malice and lust and greed it's all mixed up within us that's true for all of us the fundamental problem we have when we ask that the deepest level Who am I is we see this this intermingling bedlam and it's a very difficult thing to know what to do with we don't need someone to come along and say look think more noble thoughts try harder you know aspire you know to lead just some kind of you know happier life we need something that's bigger than that we need someone who can deal with what's gone wrong within us and that is what Jesus Christ expressly says he wants to do you see in all other systems of thought what generally happens is it sucks you're over here and something isn't right you need to get over there if you change the way you think if you change what you do if you change how you emotionally interact with this world we can get you over here and then you will finally have it all together so we can get you from A to B and there were all these different parts but Jesus came and he said there is no path from here to here none Jesus Christ didn't come to say look just think this feel that or whatever he said you need to be completely changed you need someone who can change the very framework of your existence and give you a new birth take you from here and put you there Jesus Christ literally offers to start where everybody else wants to finish he says if you turn to me I will give you that new life you can become a new creation in me do you know that work in your laughter you know that new creation many years ago now it was about 30 years and I read a book by a guy called Oliver Sacks who did is a detail here and then went off to the States he's one of the world's sort of leading neuropsychologists or something like that anyway one of the books he wrote was called awakenings which I had been made into a film with Robert De Niro I've seen have seen the film in this case and read the book as usual the book is better and I remember reading this book and by I think it's all about page 23 of the Edition I was reading I came across this quote where Oliver Sacks says this he says all of us have a basic intuitive feeling that once we will hold and well at ease at peace at home in this world totally united with the grounds of our being and somehow we lost this primal happy innocent state and we fell into our sickness and suffering we had something of infinite preciousness and beauty and we've lost it we spend the rest of our lives searching to that which we have lost hoping one day we will suddenly find it I remember reading Nass and underlining it and thinking wow this is amazing over a hundred years of psychological research hundreds of billions of dollars spent we finally got as far as Genesis chapter 3 we have all been created in God's image and we've all fallen from it we all wrestle with the consequences of that in us and we wonder if there is anything that can ultimately changes and the answer is yes that's why Jesus Christ came Jesus Christ comes into this world as God that is who he is he takes on through the cross everything that's gone wrong in your beam and my being into his say everyone thought every harmful experience every bad thing was done wrong all the consequence that flows from that and all the punishment deserves all of that he takes on into himself and he pays and through his resurrection conquers over it and comes to us and says I offer you this new life this new identity and in so doing he saying forget about the path there is no path there is no path from Earth to heaven there is no way for me to be but I can give you a new life and a new birth I can take you from here and I can put you there and that's what it means to become a Christian I remember before I became a Christian artists worried that I wouldn't have to figure everything out that I wouldn't be able to live the way Jesus wanted me to you know that it may be a disappointing experience but even as I became a Christian I hadn't quite realized the fact that God was going to show change me and that's what he does that's what it means to accept Christ in and the letter to a Greek group of people called Corinthians and one of the early Christians he penned these words are just like to finish by reading them to you this is what he said he said from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view that we once regarded Christ in this way we do so no longer if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come the old has gone the new was here and all of the sisters from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the Ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Jesus not counting people's sins against them and he is committed to us this measurement in his message of reconciliation we are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God we're making his appeal to us and we implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God God um God made Christ who had no sin to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God as God's co-workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain but he says in the time of my favor I heard you and the day of salvation I helped you I tell you now as the time of God's favor now is the day of his salvation as you sit here this is the last opportunity I'll have to speak to as I said and I'm wondering where you are in all of this because in a moment I will give you an opportunity to say yes and respond because if you're sitting here thinking actually I've just suddenly figured out what being a Christian is it's actually saying yes to Christ acknowledging what he's done for me realizing that something's gone wrong in me I'm a sinner and I need someone to change me and make me new to him I'm going to offer you that prayer but of course I also understand that maybe many people here and you're sitting here and you're thinking nice try but you're not close enough yet you haven't convinced me well that's where you are come along to speak to Stephen um this evening have any of you been here for any evening talk so far just put up your hand if you've been to any of the evening talks just like we have okay so you maybe understand what I'm about to say and Steven will be here tonight I don't know if yours will be here but Steven will be here and I think you should take full use of his time I think if you're coming tonight forget about the Kayleigh to get about dancing talk to him don't allow him to eat anything drink anything taste anything or even sit down sit down and say I'm still not sure persuade me now if you can't track down Steven then why not go to the search where you can ask all those difficult questions take the the copy of the Gospel of Luke with you and read it see what you actually think about it we're more than happy to entertain the objections and difficult questions it's worthwhile examining in the critical way now of course you could also be sitting here and you're thinking what I'm I'm still not sure I'm thinking this through you've got me thinking but I feel like I've got so much further to go and that's fine and eventually we all have to come to a conclusion about most things but if you're not in that place yet then don't don't jump the gun again why not do the search talk to your friends who invited you here you know they can learn from you maybe they you invited them you got invited here in the person said it will be interesting and you're already planning to take your friend out for a coffee and you want to take a dictionary with you to talk about the meaning of the word interesting because you're feeling they're not quite sure and when they said you would enjoy it you're thinking I'm definitely not enjoying it so we're going to look at that word too but take the time talk the people who came with you but it's also entirely possible that there are a few people here who you know you need this new life in Christ as it's almost as we've been speaking especially as I read that final quote to you that is almost as you felt like somehow God just put his hand on your heart your life and says this is for you and I know you and I I love you and I came for you this is for you and you know you need to say yes to him you need to say yes to Christ for coming into this world as God and you need to acknowledge the fact that not only have you done wrong but he took all of that wrong when that sin into his life and through his death and resurrection is offering a new life and you need that new life that new start with him and if that's where you are what I'd love to do is be able to offer just a very short prayer that basically says more or less this exactly what I said to you now and so I'll invite you just where you'll start just to close your eyes bow your head sit for a second and if you are in that place where you know you need to say yes to him then why don't you pray this with me dear Jesus I thank you that you know me I thank you that you came into this world and you both show God and you've also revealed myself to sorry for what I have done and the mess I find myself in but I think you for your cross thank you that the cross you took what's gone wrong and me into yourself my sin became your sin the consequences I deserve for my sins you took on to yourself I thank you through your resurrection you offer new life and I need to receive you and that new life today helped me live differently and show me what it truly means to walk closely with you and to enjoy the fullness of the life that you offer in Christ's name I mean

Channel: OICCU

Views: 18,892

Rating: 4.7251906 out of 5

Keywords: OICCU, Jesus, Christ, Oxford, InterCollegiate, Christian, Union, University, Church, Christianity, Michael, Ramsden, OCCA, Evangelism, Is, the, only, way, God, Religion, Atheism

Id: UGFNmDUqe04

Length: 36min 34sec (2194 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2017