Countdown, part 2: Where this blog is headed

This blog centers on the good news of Jesus Christ, and that’s one thing that’s not going to change. The good news of Jesus is what we really need, today and every day. The good news is also the one thing that (when truly believed) settles our doubts about everything else in our world.

I live in Kentucky. Over this past week, I have watched and read countless stories of the tornado outbreak that devastated the western part of our state a week ago. Towns like Mayfield, Kentucky, and Dawson Springs, Kentucky, look like war zones. As of this writing, over 75 people are dead and a handful are still missing. People who were sleeping or working late into the night suddenly had their home, workplace, or life snatched away from them. How does one firmly believe in a God who has all things under his sovereign control, and yet reconcile seemingly random disasters such as this?

The answer is the good news, and specifically the good news that is given in the Bible.

The Bible is admittedly a large and complicated book. And when we open up the Bible, we tend to bring along our own agendas. We look for answers to our own questions, instead of simply letting God speak to us. But there’s one big question that is very important both to God and to us: Is God good? And when we ask this question, it’s almost always meant to be personal: Does God want to be good to me?

God answers that question in the Bible, but with more than a simple Yes. That simple answer wouldn’t give us enough to believe in God’s goodwill in our messy, confusing, and often hurtful world. So the Bible explains repeatedly—in many different ways—how he is good and he wants to be good to us, even though it may sometimes seem otherwise. He desires reconciliation with us and wants the best for us. God is not against us; he is for us. God does not want to be our enemy; he wants to be our friend.

Therefore, starting in 2022, what will change about this blog will be the starting point of my posts. Instead of starting with some aspect of life and bringing the good news of the Bible to bear on that aspect, I’m instead going to start with the Bible and explain how it shows us the good news that applies to every aspect of our life. I’ll be working through about 100 passages of Scripture in a roughly chronological pattern, starting in Genesis and ending with Revelation. Along the way, I’ll be pointing out the pattern of the good news that shows up again and again:

God is perfectly righteous and good
We are separated from God’s goodness by our sin
God wants to reconcile with us and be good to us
We reconcile with God when we trust his good news of salvation, which is ultimately provided by Jesus’s death and resurrection.

It’s like God doesn’t want us to miss it. We live in a fallen and broken world, but God still wants to bless us more than we could dream. The one bringing that blessing is Jesus, and he is on our side today. He invites us to stop, turn to God, trust and obey him, and continue believing in the good news.

_{Featured image via Silas Baisch on Unsplash}