Good News

In last week's paper, you may have seen on the front page the good news that my daughter, Rebekah, won the Geography Bee at school. (Yes, I am a proud Daddy.)

 I am sure in this week's newspaper you can read about the good news of the Oakland - Craig Girls Basketball team winning the conference championship.

One of the differences between a small town paper and big newspapers or national news outlets is that they often include as much good news as bad news. Most of the time national news leads with the most sensational stories, which are often disasters,  shocking crimes or political candidates tearing one another down. If you spend all of your time on that type of news you can get depressed by all the bad news.

Christians are called to share the good news about Jesus, but often the news does not seem very good to others. Sometimes they look at our lives and do not see much joy, so they assume the news about Jesus must not be very good if His followers do not act like it. At other times, they assume the news from God is all about condemnation of their sin. People think church is all about judgment, and that they need to clean themselves up before they can come and be like the "holy" church goers.

Not all misperceptions of the gospel are the fault of Christians, but we can do things to make sure that the front page of our lives shows the good news about Jesus.

If you know Jesus, then the fruit of the Holy Spirit should be growing in you, so your friends and family should experience your growth in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. People will be attracted to you and then to Jesus more if these qualities are present and growing. They see and feel God's love working through you toward them.

Furthermore, we can make the good news clear while still being honest about the bad news. The bad news is that people and the world are broken by sin. Therefore, we do need to repent for our sins because sin leads to pain, rather than true happiness and fulfillment. The good news is not that God ignores sin or takes it lightly, but rather that He forgives sin and desires to transform us into people who can live happy and fulfilled lives following Him. He does this through the work of Jesus on the cross, which makes forgiveness possible, and the work of the Holy Spirit that continues the redemption in our lives. The good news is then is all about what Jesus has done and is doing in us.

Christians, living out the gospel, can be honest about the problems of life, but can show people hope beyond the bad news to the wonderful news about Jesus. My encouragement to you is to make sure that you know the good news of Jesus, and that the front page of your life tells His story.