The fact is that God demonstrated his love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus defeated sin and death, and the power of Satan through His death and resurrection.

 

Well, if that is true, then why do bad things still happen? Even though Satan was defeated, he is a disembodied spirit looking for a power source.  As long as there are unregenerate, wounded, entitled people in the earth, he has plenty of power to borrow. And as long as there are Christians who don’t trust Him enough to relate to Him intimately, he can use the woundedness of both sinner and saint to speak his words or carry out his actions in angry, frustrated, hurtful moments.  We will look at that in 2 Timothy 2 a bit later.

 

When we aren’t free of lies and pain, it is difficult to get close enough to God to experience His love. If we don’t trust Him enough to experience His love, we become more fearful.  When we are full of fear, we don’t trust Him enough to obey His commands. When we don’t obey His commands, we don’t pray as we should. When we don’t pray, speak the Word, or even speak up as we should, evil prevails.

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You see, God not only wants to show His love to you, He also wants to partner with you to continue the work Jesus did: to destroy the works of the enemy!  But job one on this journey is to draw nearer to God for healing.  So how do we start?  Well, after Jesus defeated sin, so that it could no longer separate us from God, He also did something really cool to allow us to have a tangible, intimate relationship with God.