The Gospel According to Superman

Well good morning, my name is René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I want to start with a question for you. If this is all true, you know all the stuff about God and Jesus, then why didn't God reveal himself to every single culture on earth? I mean, didn't he want them to know him too? If this is all real, what we sing about, what we talk about in church, then why in the world would God only reveal himself to a small nation in a small part of the Middle East and have them write the Bible for all the rest of us? If this is all true, what about those people who haven't yet received the Bible? And what about the people who haven't yet heard about Jesus? Doesn't God care about them?

This morning I want to talk to you about a principle that I discovered that really changed the way that I look at God. It changed the way that I look at how he reveals himself to us, and it changed the way that I look at my mission as a Christian. And I'm going to take a risk in revealing this principle to you today. So take these message notes out of your bulletins. The Gospel According To is the series that we start this morning, and I want to start by telling you a true story about a gentleman I had the privilege of meeting about 27 years ago, and it's this gentleman who taught me the principle I'm going to share today. Anthropologist and missionary Don Richardson.

In the 60s, Don and his family went to a very remote island in Indonesia, in Papua New Guinea, to be specific, to study the culture there and to try to start a church. And Don found that when he told the story of Jesus, and he got to the end, and he talked about how Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest associates, by Judas. And Judas betrayed Jesus for some money, and he betrayed him with a kiss. He couldn't get any further than that in the story, because the tribes people erupted in applause and cheers for Judas. And Judas became a folk hero in their culture. They all said, "We are so glad you shared that story with us. We all want to be disciples of Judas."

You might say, "Why in the world would they be so excited about Judas?" Well, Don discovered that in that culture, one of their highest values was treachery. And he might wonder why. Well, life was so difficult on the islands where they lived that it was literally like living in an episode of Survivor, that TV show, all the time. And you know, on Survivor, it's sort of clever if you make alliances with people and then to benefit yourself you betray them so that you can survive on the island longer. Well, that had become a value in that culture. It was how you stayed alive. It was an advantage to learn how to be treacherous for your own family's advantage.

And so they lauded the idea of Judas because they figured he did it in the most perfect way possible. He betrayed somebody for some money, and he did it with a kiss. They loved that Judas kiss part. And Don thought to himself, "Well, this is not exactly the effect I hoped to have by sharing the story of Jesus." And he was completely stumped about how to share the true intent, the true meaning behind Christianity until they told him about what they called the most ancient part of their culture. They said, "This is a custom that was passed on to us from our ancestors going back all the way to the dawn of time." And they called it the custom of the peace child.

I want to show you a peace child right now. Oh, I'm sorry. That's actually a grandchild, not a peace child, but -- this is Freddie Jett, my own grandchild. I told you I had a grandson about nine months ago now. But let me show you a peace child. This is a picture of an actual peace child being shared in that culture, and here is what that tradition came to. The chief of a village would take his own firstborn son, and he would give it to the elders of an enemy village to raise a guarantee that he would not attack that village. And that child was called the peace child.

And the worst thing you could do in that culture was to kill the peace child or allow the peace child to come to harm, because if you did, your whole village was culpable, no matter who committed that taboo and deserved to be wiped out. And when he heard this, a light bulb went on above Don's head. He said, "We got off on the wrong foot. Let me explain what I believe this way. God, the creator, God," and they believed in a creator God. He said, "The creator God sent his peace child, his only son to our village, so that we would not have to bear his wrath, but we killed the peace child led by Judas." And so now our whole village deserves death. We're all culpable. But instead, the creator forgives us, and he by his power raised his only son from the dead, so that now he is our unending peace child in heaven forever interceding between us and God.

And so God calls us all to live in peace with him and in peace with one another because of the forever peace child that he has sent us. And they said, "Well, why didn't you tell us that before?" And I looked it up. I just read this week that one of Don's sons is going back apparently to visit, and now 50 years later, there are about 3,000 people in the church there today, right now, a church about the size of ours in that little tiny community. Why? They resonated with what Don calls the principle of redemptive analogies.

What's a redemptive analogy? Here's how he defines that. Quote, "Embedded in a culture, there's frequently some practice or some understanding which can be used to demonstrate the gospel in a way that's culturally sensitive." And he says you can find these touch points in every ancient and modern culture. Now, just to be clear, he's not saying all paths lead to God. What he is saying is that there are clues everywhere that God has placed everywhere that lead to Jesus. As the Bible says, God has not left himself without witness, even in cultures that don't yet have the Bible or among people who've never heard about Christ.

Now, you might say, "Well, René, you're telling me something that sounds good, but is this actually biblical? Is there anything like this in the Bible that demonstrates these redemptive analogies that Don Richardson says that he has found in all kinds of different cultures?" Well, let me take you back in time, 2,000 years to the time of the New Testament, specifically to the book of Acts, chapter 17. The Apostle Paul is in Athens. Let me set the stage for you. This is the headquarters of Greek philosophy, the headquarters of Greek religion. And as he speaks there, Paul has a massive challenge. He has to explain the biblical concept, the Christian concept of God, to an audience of Greek philosophers.

And in their temples, how are the gods portrayed? Basically as gigantic human beings. And Paul's trying to get across the idea that God is not an idol or a statue or a giant human who hates us and tries to make life miserable for us. That's the Greek idea of the gods. But the biblical idea of God is completely different. But in trying to make his case, he can't just quote the Bible to them because they don't believe the Bible. And so Paul does something very interesting in Acts 17, 28. He quotes their own culture with two quotes from pagan poets. He says, "For in him we live and move and exist," as even some of your own poets have said, "for we also are his children."

Watch this. He's quoting two pagan sources here. The first quote comes from a famous Greek philosopher named Epimenides. And check this out. This quote is actually from a poem about the Greek god Zeus. And the second quote, "For we also are his children," comes from an ancient Greek song known as "The Hymn to Zeus" by Aratus. Now, they were both writing about Zeus, not the god of the Bible. Zeus, the head of all the pagan gods. And Paul's using these quotes, he's saying, "You may think of God as a giant white man with a giant white beard living up on a giant white cloud." But he says, "Let me quote some of your own poets and songwriters, and here's the part they got right." They said, "We live and move and exist in him." In other words, he is everywhere present invisibly. He's not an old man on a cloud somewhere. And we are his children. He is our father, not some angry tyrant.

Now, of course, he is not endorsing everything that these guys wrote. He's saying, "Here's where they were onto something." Now, think, to quote this kind of stuff off the top of your head and make these connections, he had to know Greek poetry. He had to know Greek pagan hymns. He clearly didn't live just isolated from his culture. And this is a great example for us today. When I was a teenager, I remember I lived in San Jose, and I went to hear Billy Graham preach live. Show of hands, anybody here ever go to hear Billy Graham write famous preacher, right, kind of almost like the Protestant Pope or something in the '60s and '70s and '80s? Really, he was really high up there, right?

So he gets up there to start his sermon, and he was famous for always saying, "The Bible says," and going to Scripture. But he starts his sermon not by quoting the Bible, not by quoting a Christian author, not by quoting a Christian song. He gets up there and from memory, quotes the lyrics to a song by the Rolling Stones. He starts with, "Many of you know the song, 'I try and I try and I try and I try, but I can't get no satisfaction.'" And instead of saying, "Here's another song that shows the evils of rock and roll," he says, "McJagger and Keith Richards are onto something." He says, "Because we can get everything that we think we need to make us happy and still have a longing for something more." He says, "Even rock gods who you think have it all, they sense that we've got a hole in our souls. And let me tell you how to fill it." And man, he had me hooked, partly because I couldn't believe that Billy Graham had even heard of the Rolling Stones, let alone quoting them from memory.

Now, if you know your stones, you know that that song is actually about sex, drugs and rock and roll, right? And you're going, "I don't know if that was appropriate actually for Billy Graham to quote in a sermon." Is that biblical? Well, check this out. There's an even more surprising place that Paul does something like this. In 1 Corinthians 15:33, Paul says, "Do not be deceived," and then he has a quote. "Bad company corrupts good morals." And he's giving weight to his argument by not wagging his finger at them and saying, "Bad company corrupts good morals." He's quoting what was a very popular play at the time. It was a play by a Greek playwright named Menander. And check this out. It is a play about, it's a comedy, a very body comedy, about the world's most famous prostitute. And there's a character in the comedy who sort of cynically says this line, "Well, bad company corrupts good morals." It's kind of a laugh line.

And to these Corinthians who are misbehaving and probably wouldn't take very easily somebody kind of like pointing the finger and nagging at them, Paul says, "Hey, you know what? You've seen that play about the world's most famous prostitute. There's even a character in there that says, 'Hey, bad company corrupts good morals.'" He's not endorsing everything in the play. He's saying, "There's a little line even in that worldly play that says what you all know is true, that when you hang around those kind of people, you kind of turn into those kind of people." Now, using non-religious stories like that to illustrate truth wasn't just something Paul did. Jesus Christ himself often, in fact, I'd say always, taught with non-religious stories.

Now look up here for a second. Let me explain this. We call them parables, but what we often miss, because for us the parables are so familiar for most of us, they're so associated with a religious context, and we hear them in church. What we miss is none of the parables are religious stories. They're not religious stories. Jesus is talking about crime. He's talking about family soap operas and rebellious children. He's talking about farmers who have enemies that in the night come and sow weeds in his wheat crops. They're not religious stories at all. And Jesus at the end uses kind of a plot twist and makes them into spiritual examples.

In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew it says, "Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds." In fact, he never spoke them without using such parables. Why? Because stories cut past people's defenses. And this is why one of the most effective things that you and I can do as believers is, as Jesus did, as Paul did, look around at nature, look around at our culture, and look at some surprising sources, like the Rolling Stones or a play about a prostitute, that you can quote to use to kind of illustrate a Gospel truth.

A man named John Stoddard, a great quote, he said, "The great tragedy in the church today is that some Christians are biblical but not contemporary, while others are contemporary but not biblical. We need faithfulness to the ancient word and sensitivity to the modern world." Let me give you an example from my own life of what I'm talking about, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Before we go over on the points on page 2, look up here for a second because I want you to get this whole story. Some of you know before I began my career as a pastor, I had a whole other career as a broadcaster. And even today, once in a while, I still kind of exercised that muscle and several years back the local talk radio station, KSCO, had me in to record some little liners.

Those are those little buffers that go between commercials and radio shows that say things like, "Tune it in and lock it in." You're tuned to KSCO, those sorts of things, right? So they asked me to do a whole bunch of those for the station that they still use. So I'm there in the production studio, and I'm recording these liners, and the production director, who's in the other recording these for me, keeps coming on the intercom after every take, insulting me. Not about my voice or something, but about my career. He's just needling me. He goes, "So you're a pastor, huh? Well, that's all a crock." Okay, line 2. And so I record the next line. He goes, "Good job, preacher man." He goes, "Even though I don't believe a word of what you say, all right, take three." And you know, just like this the whole time.

So finally I said, "John, it sounds like there's a story behind that. Why don't you tell that to me?" He goes, "Well, I'm kind of angry at the church." He goes, "And I'll tell you why." He said, "I grew up in church and named the nomination up in Oregon." And he said, "I went to Sunday school every single weekend as a kid, memorized the Ten Commandments." He said, "I still can see them. The Ten Commandments were on the wall of our Sunday school room." And he said, "Every single week, the teacher basically pointed to those Ten Commandments and said, 'Try harder to live like this. Be a better boy.'" And he said, "That is all a crock." Only he used stronger language. He said, "And I'll tell you how I learned that. I grew up and I became an alcoholic."

And he said, "I learned that trying harder to be good doesn't work." He said, "What you've got to do instead of try harder to obey some religious rules is you've got to realize that you're powerless to overcome your self-destructive tendencies and you've got to turn it all over to the control of a higher power, not the petty God of the Ten Commandments." He goes, "What do you say about that?" I said, "Well, I think you just summarized the Christian gospel." He said, "What?" I said, "The twelve steps have benefited me too with some things that I struggle with in my own life." And I said, "I've learned that the twelve steps really have Biblical parallels, especially the first three that basically can be summarized like this. I can't. God can. So I'll let him." I said, "That's the gospel. The gospel's not about trying harder to be better. It's about admitting that without God, I'm hopelessly entrenched in my self-destructive behavior pattern. I need to turn it all over to him and he changes me from the inside out by his grace." I said, "You just summarized the gospel a lot better than a lot of church people I know can."

Well, he ended up attending here at Twin Lakes Church until he moved out of state to take another radio job, and I'm delighted to find the core of the gospel kind of as a redemptive analogy in AA, even though AA is not a Christian organization. You can still find redemptive analogies there, like Billy Graham found with the Rolling Stones or Paul found in a play about a prostitute. And in this series, what I want to do is equip you as believers and show you some examples of how you can find these all around. It's like, well, next weekend we're going to do the gospel according to Les Misérables, and it's going to be amazing. I hope you're here. I hope you invite a friend. We're going to fill this stage with a 120-voice choir. There's going to be a live orchestra. It's all going to be free.

I'm going to come on between some of the songs and talk about the amazing illustration of the power of God's grace that you find in Les Mis. It's going to be rich and deep and moving. And we're even adding an extra service time next weekend at 4 p.m. on Saturday. So if you like matinees, come to that. You can come to that and see if it's any good, then invite a friend the next morning, because it's going to be great. So I hope you're here for that. But this week, I want to go another direction. This week, as we start this series, I want to look at another example of a redemptive analogy in Superman. Flip your notes over to page two.

Because comic book culture is huge right now. In fact, a lot of people aren't aware anymore of any ancient mythologies. These are our mythologies now. Comic book characters and movies and TV shows and so forth. And I think that's because we don't have those ancient stories to look back on. So I want you to imagine this. And this is why this sort of thing is important. Imagine you're having a discussion with a 20-something friend of yours that you know from work or from the neighborhood, or maybe he's been a relative of yours, and he's into comic book culture. He likes to go see these movies, and maybe you do too. And you've been trying to have a conversation about Christ with him, and it's never gone anywhere. He just cuts you off because you can tell he has a caricature of Christianity as being a religion all about do's and don'ts. It's a religion that's all about rules and regulations.

So how are you going to get your friend to understand the heart of your faith? Well, there are redemptive analogies all through the story of Superman, if you're looking for them. And so you might open the conversation like this. You know, I was thinking the other day of all the parallels between Superman and Jesus. It's kind of irresistible, right? So he's going to say, "Really? Like what?" He'll say, "Well, there's five that pop right off the top of my head." Like, first, the son is sent to our world by a loving father. In the Superman story, he's sent in a spaceship, right? And he's raised by two simple farmers, the Kent's, who name him Clark. By the way, in the original story, you know the original first names of Ma and Pa Kent, Joseph and Mary. And that was changed later to Jonathan and Martha.

Well, then, when he's about 18 years old, Clark Kent goes into the wilderness, the Arctic wilderness, to this big ice crystal palace. And I want to know, do we have any comic book nerds here? What is the name of this ice crystal palace? Thank you. The Fortress of Solitude, three other 55-year-old men just like me. They know the answer. And in the Fortress of Solitude, he meets his father, and he discovers something through this hologram of his father. His real name, Superman's real name, is Kal-El. And his father's name is Jor-El. What's intriguing is that Superman was created by two Jewish teenagers, and El, their last name, is the Hebrew word for God. Kind of, it just layers. Just wait. Just be patient, because it keeps building.

Now, he gets instruction from his father, tells him why he was sent to Earth, and here's what his father tells him. Look at this scene. Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover why your strength and your power are needed, to always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good. I have sent them you, my only son. I've sent them you, my only son. That's kind of an echo of verses like John 1:9. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

And so, in the story, Superman comes out of the wilderness, after this period of testing, when he's 30, to begin his ministry, I mean his mission as Superman, and the parallels continue. Number two, even though he only wants to do good, people reject him, right? For no apparent reason. Even after he performs what seem like miracles, especially the opinion leaders in the media, are cynical, they're suspicious. In the movie Superman Returns, for instance, Superman as Clark Kent peers onto Lois Lane's desk, and he sees this. So she is famous for writing a bitter article about how the world doesn't need Superman. In fact, she says in her article, the world doesn't need a savior at all. We can do it ourselves.

And you can share with your friend, you can say, you know, you say sometimes, if God exists, then why doesn't he come down to earth and prove it? Well, even if he did come down to earth and do miracles, people would still reject him because it's human nature to be like a little toddler who cries and says, no, I do, I don't need your help. A toddler, much like this toddler, for example, but I can dress myself for Easter. The Bible says Jesus came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him. He came to his own people, even they rejected him. But here's the good news, even though we try to push him away, he doesn't give up on us. He still hears. He still hears.

In the movie Superman Returns, Superman has a reunion with this critical reporter, Lois Lane, and he shows her how he sees. And here's the world. Watch this. Listen. What do you hear? Nothing. I hear everything. He wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one. And the good news is this, even though we push God away, the Bible says he heard me from his sanctuary. My cry reached his ears. But the biggest redemptive analogy in the Superman mythology is this. He sacrifices to save. He sacrifices his own life to save humanity. And this is really the crux, literally, of the whole story.

In the movie, the villain Lex Luthor, it sounds a little bit like Lucifer to me, but Lex Luthor uses a poison element named kryptonite. It's the only thing that's so poisonous it can even kill Superman. But he uses it to create literally a cancer on Earth. It's this big blob of rock that is growing and growing and growing, and it's soon going to poison and infest the whole planet. And he's doing this because he wants to rule the world, even if it means hurting everybody else. And obviously, this is how the Bible talks about sin. It's not just something on a list of rules. It's something that's rebellious against the way God made the creation to be. And it starts small, and it grows, and it's always deadly and takes over. And it happens when we want to set ourselves up as the ruler of our universe.

Now, in the movie, there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. The world is apparently doomed by this poison. And Superman must take on himself the weight of all this evil in order to save the world. And watch out for those eyes. Talk about a redemptive analogy, right? What's that look like? Jesus Christ on a cross. The Bible says of Jesus, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness by His wounds you have been healed." And you're able to tell your friends, see, this is really the core of Christianity. Jesus wasn't just a teacher, and it's not primarily a religion of do's and don'ts, of trying hard to keep rules on a list. It's a faith based on marveling at what God's Son did for us.

And it's as we have our imaginations captured, our hearts won by His sacrifice, that we are changed from the inside out. But it gets better. Watch this. Getting back to that movie, Superman does apparently pay the ultimate price. Superman is dead. They keep him in a room, ready to send him off to the morgue, and then, about three days later, a woman goes to prepare the body for burial and slips past some of the guards from the NYPD or the Metropolitan Police guarding the body, and here's what she finds. The linen is empty. And this leads us to the final analogy. He conquers death and is with us.

Because this is an idea that, again, it just resonates inside of our souls as human beings. Against all evidence in the world around us, we believe in and long for a resurrection. And it makes our souls soar to think of it. Now, in the movie, after he comes back from what seems like death, before he makes any other public appearances, he makes a personal visit to a small, sick boy and his mother, that reporter we saw earlier. And here's what happens. Will we see you? Around? I'm always around. Isn't that interesting? Like the risen Jesus said, "Surely I am with you always." He's always around.

Now, believe it or not, I went to see this film, Superman Returns, when it first came out with a friend of mine. And I said, "Did you see all the redemptive analogies, all the parallels of the story of Christ?" And he looked at me and he said, "What in the world are you talking about?" They are all around us in modern and ancient culture, in mythology, in theater, in music, in literature. But you have to be looking for them. They are clues that are being left by God and that are being created by people just made in God's image. And because that's the story we resonate with, made in the image of God, those stories are going to find their way into the world all around us.

Now, of course, Superman is a myth, is a fiction, and Jesus Christ is the real thing. We talked about some of the historical evidences for Christ last week in our Easter message. What I'm saying is the Superman story is one example of something that can help you start the conversation and help people to get a better sense of what makes your faith appealing to you, better than you can in some churches. That Christianity is about the heart-captivating beauty of the sacrifice of the Son of God for us. And that's just the most obvious analogy. These exist, again, all through culture. If you look for them, you'll see them everywhere.

Now, you might think, "Well, would anybody really be persuaded by any of this?" Would somebody really come to faith in Christ? Because I pointed out some of these parallels in modern and ancient mythologies. Well, let me tell you about somebody who did. You might recognize the name C.S. Lewis. Anybody ever heard of C.S. Lewis here? Professor of Medieval Literature at Oxford and then at Cambridge. He wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and a lot, lot more. When he was 32, he was an atheist. He called himself a rationalist. But that all changed through his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and also a professor at Oxford.

One late September night in 1931, the two friends were in Lewis' study at Modlin College in Oxford, and they were talking about Tolkien's faith. Tolkien was a devout Christian, and C.S. Lewis, as an atheist rationalist, said, "How can you believe that all that Christianity stuff is really true?" Tolkien said, "You really want to know why I think it's true?" He says, "There's reasons I think it's true related to my study of philology and my study of ancient mythologies." Lewis said, "That sounds intriguing." Tolkien said, "Well, let's go for a walk." They left Modlin College in Oxford, and they went for a walk along this path called Addison's Walk.

I've had the privilege of taking a walk myself and imagining the conversation. The reason we have a retelling of that conversation is I think God's grace, Tolkien and Lewis invited a third person along, a friend of theirs, who was also a professor and an author. He never became famous, but he kind of was the third person walking behind the two of them, listening to this conversation. Wouldn't you have loved to have been there and heard C.S. Lewis talking to J.R. Tolkien about Christianity? And Lewis isn't even a Christian yet. What we know from this third man's account, here's what happened.

He said, "Tolkien started sharing his belief that, quote, 'through myths and legends in many cultures, the Celtic myths, the Brothers Grimm stories, Fairy Tales, God had placed a taste of the Gospel, as he put it, so that it could be sort of smuggled past the barriers of suspicious people.' And he said, 'This is why the stories that resonate with us at the deepest level are the stories like Beowulf, where the hero gives his life to save his people.' And then Tolkien said, 'Then one day, God came into actual history.' And he gave Lewis some of the historical evidences for Jesus. And he said, 'And everything that we long for and respond to in all the myths came true in Jesus, in a real place and a real time.' As he put it, 'He is the true myth.'

And as Lewis later said, 'Suddenly he could see that the nourishment I had always received from great myths and fantasy stories was a taste of that greatest, truest story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.' Now, this is not some dummy. This is a professor of this stuff, a professor of medieval literature, who knew a thousand more examples of redemptive analogies than I'll ever learn, and he looked and he saw all these clues and cultures that had never had contact with one another, and he made the conclusion there was an author behind all those stories. And nine days later, Lewis decided to become a follower of Jesus Christ.

It can really make a difference to keep your eyes peeled. So here's your mission as you leave here today. Bridge building. As you go through your week, look at the world a little bit differently. In nature, the flowers, the trees, in stories, in ancient and modern mythologies, it's all packed with little clues that lead you back to the creative God who's placing those clues for you everywhere to be found. Now, I'm not saying you can find new revelation out there. I'm saying you can find new illustration of the ultimate revelation in the Bible when you look for bridges to the gospel in the world all around you.

And I can guarantee you two things if you do this. Number one, it'll revitalize your own faith. It really will. And second, it'll get you excited about ways that you could possibly share your faith with somebody, and you're going to see those doors open because you'll be more prepared because you will be living like the Apostle Paul in Acts 17. Now, let me say this as I wrap up. Maybe this morning you find yourself in the same place that C.S. Lewis was on that walk. And you don't really buy into all this stuff, but you're starting to suspect that maybe there is a God who is planting these clues and hints all around you to lead you home, and you start to look behind you, and you see those clues in your life.

Well, let me just say, I think you're on to something. God really does love you, and He really is always reaching out to you with all these little whispers, with all these little hints and clues and in poems and in songs and in stories and even in movies, because He has the hope that someday, maybe today, you'll reach out to Him and live in a loving relationship with your Father God. And if that sounds good to you, let's pray together right now. Would you bow your heads and your hearts with me?

Lord, thank You so much that You care for us, that You long so much to have a relationship with us and to save us from the poison of sin that you've been planting clues about yourself in our culture and creation that all point to Jesus. And so today, I want to place my trust in Him. I don't understand it all, but as much as I understand, I want to turn my life and my will over to You as my Lord and as my Savior, that You love me so much, You are willing to submit to the cross and die on my behalf is so amazing, I can't understand it. I can only accept it. And so I do. Help me to learn more, to keep growing in relationship with You, my living, my active, my creative Father God. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.