You need Jesus.  So do I.  So do our friends, our neighbors and relatives, our children and our boss and fellow workers.  Everyone needs Jesus.

Why?  Because real life does not even begin without Christ.

That fact may surprise you if you have been around for many years.  You may look back on the years and feel that you have already been experiencing real life.  After all, you have known love, pain, joy and hope, to some extent in those years.

But real life is only found in Jesus Christ.  Real and complete joy flows out of God’s own Being, by His Holy Spirit, and reaches us only in Christ Himself.

Religion often masks the reality of God’s power and life.  Theology, after all, cannot begin to give us the reality of God.  Don’t accept empty substitutes.  Turn to Jesus Christ Himself, and discover what real joy, love and life are all about.

Want to know more about this reality?

If you find a good church, you can learn about it.  But how will you know if you find a good church?  Only a Christian group that truly believes and reads and practices the teachings of the Holy Bible can be counted as a “good” church group.

And how will you know if a group really believes the Bible and puts its teachings into practice?    Well, you will need to read and know the Bible to some extent yourself.   For example, if a church embraces the teachings of some other book, like those found in counterfeit religions, such as Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Scientology, etc., the group is not truly Christian, no matter how sincere or friendly they seem to be.  Why?  Because the “Jesus” they follow is not the Jesus Christ who came and died for our sins.

Jesus Himself says that we are to judge spiritual leaders and so-called prophets (preachers of God’s message) by the kind of fruit they produce.  He gives the analogy of a tree.  A good tree, Jesus says, will produce good fruit, and a bad tree will produce lousy fruit.

If you want a nice pear, you must look for it on a good pear tree.  You will not find pears on oak trees or pine trees.  In the same way, if you want a lot of pop-psychology or pop-religious garbage, then pick just about any kind of church on the planet.  But if you want to know what God says about who Jesus Christ really is, and what He has to offer us, then you will need to find a group of real Christian believers.

Of course, you don’t have to wait until you read the whole Bible, and find a really good church, to accept the Lord Jesus and His gift of real life and joy.  The Lord is near you now, and ready to accept you when you call on Him in prayer.  It’s a heart-thing.

Right where you are, right now, you can turn to God in simple prayer and ask for His gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ.  Turn your life over to Him and allow Him to transform you into a new creation — a child of God, and a follower of Jesus Christ.

If you need help, fell free to check out this page, “A New Life with God.”   There you will find a few of the things God says about Jesus in the Bible, and how Christ can become your Savior and Lord today.

I know that some of the terms I use may seem odd to you.  They may sound like another kind of language.  But as you turn your heart and life to Jesus Christ — and begin to discover real life in Him — all that I’m talking about will start becoming very clear to you.  Until you are spiritually reborn in Christ (something that only God can give you by His own Holy Spirit) you can’t really understand very much about God or His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Only in Christ can you begin to grasp the real meaning of life and the real purpose for being.

May the Lord help you in your journey to reality of life and meaning.  May He guide you every step of the way to joy and purpose and a new hope in Christ.  God’s best to you — now and forever.

Jim