What is Christianity really all about? Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Pentecostals - do they really have anything in common?

All Christian churches, if they are truly Christian, do have certain things in common. They'll use different terms or emphasize different aspects, but the essence of Christianity is this:

The Bible tells us that God created us because he wanted somebody he could love, and who would love him. But he wanted real love, not something forced or robotic. So he gave our first ancestors free will. He set them down in the Garden of Eden and told them, "You can do anything you want to do in the whole wide world, except one thing. Don't eat the fruit off this one tree. Eat anything else you want, do anything else you want, just don't eat the fruit from this one tree, and you'll be alright."

What did Adam and Eve do? Being typical human beings, they went straight to that tree and ate the fruit!

They disobeyed God. The Bible word for that is sin. Now there are a lot of problems with sin, but I want to mention three in particular.

The first problem with sin is that it separates us from God. It makes us unfit to be around him.

A lot of people think that when they die, God will take out his scales and weigh the good and the bad they have accomplished in their life. If there is more good than bad, they will go to heaven. If there is more bad than good, they won't.

It sounds reasonable. But it's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that any amount of sin, anything at all that is not exactly what God wanted, is enough to separate us from God.

Picture your life is a glass of water, and sin is sewage. Does the glass have to be more than half full of sewage before it becomes undrinkable? No! You could take a medicine dropper and put one drop of sewage in the glass, and it would pollute the whole thing.

That's what sin does with your life.

Now picture heaven as the pitcher of water. What would happen if you took that polluted glass and poured it in the pitcher? It would pollute the whole thing. It wouldn't be pure anymore. It wouldn't be heaven anymore.

Or look at it another way. God is light, and sin is darkness. What happens if you try to pick up a chunk of darkness and carry it into the light? The light blows it away! It destroys it! And the same thing would happen to your sin-darkened self if you tried to come into God's presence.

So the first problem with sin is that it makes us unfit to be around God. The second problem is that there's nothing we can do to fix it.

You see, even if you could live a perfect life from now on, it wouldn't fix what has already been.  It would be just like pouring more clean water into that polluted glass.

The third problem with sin is what makes the other two so important. You see, God created us eternal. Our bodies aren't eternal, of course, but our souls and spirits are - and the Bible says we will get eternal bodies when we die. There are only two eternal places: heaven and hell. So if we have made ourselves unfit for heaven, it doesn't leave us in a very good situation.

I tell people, the good news of the gospel is that we're all going to hell and there's nothing we can do about it.

The reason that's good news is that it takes the pressure off.  We don't have to worry about messing up on a lot of rules and regulations, because we've all messed up already.

But there's another half of the good news.  While there isn't anything we can do about sin, there was something God could do about it. And he did.

It's been said that all the other religions in the world are methods for people to try to climb up to God, to become good enough to make it into heaven. Christianity is God saying, "Forget it. It can't be done. But I'll reach down to you!"

God reached down to us when he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, who was God himself, to become one of us. He was born a baby on the first Christmas, and he is the only person who ever lived without sin.

Now the Bible says the wages of sin is death. All of us have sinned, all of us have to die. All of us except Jesus. Jesus never sinned, so he didn't have to die. But he chose to die anyway, for us. He allowed sinful people to nail him to a cross. And since his death didn't have to pay for his sins (he didn't have any sins to pay for), it could pay for somebody else's sins. And since Jesus is God, his death could pay for everyone's sins.

The Bible says this is a gift of grace. That means there is nothing we can do to earn it, deserve it, or pay for it. It's a gift, just because God loves you.

Now imagine I'm holding a hundred dollar bill in my hand, and I say I want to give it to you as a gift. What do you have to do to make it yours? You have to take it. You have to hold out your hands and receive it.

It's the same with God's gift of eternal life. You can't earn it or pay for it, but you do have to hold out your heart and receive it.

You can do that by a simple prayer.  Just admit to God that you need his forgiveness, choose to believe that Jesus can give it to you, and ask him to come into your life and take over.

I have a T-shirt that says, "If God is your co-pilot, switch seats!" You have to let God be the pilot. Otherwise you're going to crash.

Once you make that decision to follow Jesus, a lot of good things happen, but again there are three I want to mention.

The first is that all your sins are forgiven. Past, present and future, your sins are wiped out. You will still face judgment, but it will be to judge what reward you get based on your good deeds. The sins are all reased. (Of course, this doesn't mean you can go right out and commit a lot of sins and get off free. If that is your attitude, it means you weren't really sincere when you asked God to take over your life.  And you can't fool God! I'm talking the slips that come even when you are trying to follow Jesus.).

The second good thing that happens is that you become an adopted child of God. Before, you were a creature of God, but you weren't his child. When you give your life to follow Jesus, the Bible says God adopts you. That means you inherit all the promises of the Bible, including guaranteed reservations in heaven - not because you've lived a good life, not because you belonged to a certain group, but because Jesus died for you and you put your trust in him.

In order to understand the third good thing that happens, we have to go back to creation, where the Bible says that God created us in his own image. Now one of the main things to know about God is that he is Trinity. That means God the Father, God the Son (who is Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit are all God, but there is only one God. I don't understand it, but I figure if my puny brain could understand everything there is about God, he wouldn't be worth worshipping!

God created us in his image, so he made us three-in-one also. He made us with a body, a soul and a spirit. You know what your body is.  Your soul is your mind, emotions, imagination, memory, and so on. Your spirit is the part that was created to communicate with God.

Now when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, it broke their spirits, and people have been born without working spirits ever since. The Bible says that when you give your life to follow Jesus, your spirit is made new, or born again. Immediately, the Holy Spirit of God comes to live in your new human spirit.  You have a brand new godly nature!

The problem is, you still also have your old human nature.

The Christian life, then, becomes a process of learning to let your new godly nature be in control.

I picture it like an onion with a light bulb inside. When you give your life to Jesus, the light starts shining. But to let it really shine out, you have to peel away the layers of the onion, which are your old worldly ways of saying and thinking and doing things, that get in the way of what God wants to do in and through you.

That's where prayer and Bible reading and church come in. They provide power for the light bulb, and they help peel away the layers of the onion.

The biggest question anyone can answer in their life is this: was there ever a time you made the decision to follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and asked him to come into your life? If not, would you like to do it now?

It's very simple. Just pray this prayer: "Dear God, I know I'm a sinner, and there's nothing I can do about it. But I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died to pay for my sins, and rose from the dead to give me eternal life. Please come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Please forgive my sins. Please fill me with your Holy Spirit, and help me follow you. I put you in charge of my life.. Thank you, Lord. Amen."

If you prayed that prayer and meant it, or if you have said something similar in the past, you are a Christian, a forgiven child of God with guaranteed reservations in heaven. It doesn't mean you're perfect. It doesn't mean you'll never have any more problems or make any more mistakes or commit any more sins. What it means is that you have connected with God, who loves you so much he gave his only Son to die for you, and God can handle all that stuff.

That's what it's all about.

I could stop here, but if you prayed that prayer for the first time just now, there are a few very important things you should know.

First, there is a spiritual force in this world that is not happy about what you've done. The devil will try to make you think you were emotionally manipulated or brainwashed, and there's really nothing to it. Or else, the next time you slip up, he'll try to tell you this Christianity stuff didn't work for you, it didn't take, you might as well give it up. Don't listen to that. The Bible says you have the authority to say, "In the name of Jesus, I command that stuff to get out of my head and leave me alone!" And it will. Of course, then you need to consciously start thinking about godly things, or it will come right back. If you've been involved in some things you shouldn't have been, you may need to stop associating with certain people or going certain places to keep from slipping back into it. Fill your life with people and activities that will lead you closer to God, not farther away.

Second, God wants to talk with you. Have you ever noticed how lots of people pray as if they were calling God on the telephone and leaving a Christmas list on his answering machine? "Dear God, please give me this and this and this, Amen." God isn't Santa Claus. He wants a relationship with you. So when you talk to him, talk naturally, the way you talk to anyone you respect. And then listen for an answer. But remember that the God isn't in your head, he's in your heart. So the answer won't come in words, but in feelings or hunches or intuitions. You learn to recognize which ones are God the same way you learn to recognize somebody's voice on the telephone, by practice. And you recognize God's voice by reading the Bible, which is God's love letter to you, to learn the kinds of things God says. God never contradicts himself. If it doesn't go along with the Bible, it isn't God. Get a modern, easy-to-read translation, maybe one with notes at the bottoms of the pages to explain the difficult parts. Start with the book of Mark or John, reading a little every day and letting God show you how it applies to your life.

Third, find a good church. There are lots of them out there. Some are for people who like stained glass and organ music, some are for people who like drums and electric guitars. Some are for emotional people, some are for intellectual types.  There's a church that's right for you. Just remember, Christianity isn't about rules and regulations, so steer clear of churches that would try to tell you every detail of how to live your life, or judge you on how you dress or talk. If they love Jesus, the Bible, and people, that's what's important.

I could go on and on, but if you've stuck with it this far, you've got the essence. What's it all about? It's about connecting with God and sharing his love.