All Things from God the Father, Through God the Son, By God the Holy Spirit

^{Day 2 of Camp Venango for Jesus}

¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  John 14:16-17

Good morning Camper!

Jesus is God’s Son. Who knew?

·      The devil knew, and he tried to tempt Jesus to sin (Matthew 4:1-11).

·      The demons knew and they howled and cried out in terror (Luke 8:28).

·      The blind man knew. He called out and was healed (Mark 10:46-52).

·      The thief on the cross knew, and he got to go to paradise with Jesus (Luke 23:42).

The Old Testament told that a savior, the Son of God would come to earth – about a zillion years before it happened. (A zillion years is a huge exaggeration.) The New Testament tells about Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection. Even history books tell about Jesus. But what’s that to you? Nothing until you meet him heart-to-heart and get to know him. And after that, Jesus means everything to you.

Once you have a relationship with Jesus nothing can stop you! Er, well, nothing but sin. Yep it’s still a bit of a problem. All through the Bible there are lists of sins that we need to keep away from, and I don’t know about you, but that’s hard for me. I am constantly reminded that I can’t do it on my own. John tells us in the Bible that he wrote these things down so we would stop sinning, but – here’s the good part – if we do sin, Jesus, God’s Son will defend us to his Father in heaven. He’ll cover for us when we confess our sins. 1^st John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful…and will forgive our sins…” How cool is that? The holy, righteous, good, Jesus goes to bat for us not-so-good and sometimes downright rotten people. (You can read more about it in 1^st John 2:1-11.)

But hold on a minute…I hope you know that believing in Jesus isn’t enough. Remember those demons mentioned above? They believed. Oh yeah, and they still believe, and they shudder. They believe in Jesus, but they don’t honor him or obey him. That’s a problem. You don’t want to be like that. Believe in Jesus with all your heart and obey his commands. John 14:15 (right before our theme verses, John 14:16-17) says, “If you love me you will obey my commandments.”

Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

I know you are the Son of God and I believe in you, but I want to do more than believe. I want to know you and obey you. I’m giving myself to you, because you gave your life for me. Please be the Lord of my life and the King of my world every minute of every day. I love you Jesus. Amen.