Bryan Loritts Morning rally on December 29th, 2013 at the Campus Outreach Milwaukee New Year's Conference
Aligning with the theme of the Conference, Bryan Loritts explains that if you have an actual encounter with Jesus Christ, your life will never be the same. If we live moral and even selfless lives, but have not truly encountered Christ, we are destined for hell. If we live immorally - even if our lives are marked by evil and horrendous actions - but we have genuinely experienced a life-changing encounter with Jesus, then our destiny is eternal life with God.
Before you were born, God knew you. He created you in your mother’s womb, and says in his word that you are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14). God created us for himself - to have a relationship with him. Nothing else in this life will satisfy our desires - only God can: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus” (Blaise Pascal).
John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Jesus came to give you life - the kind of life that will turn your life upside-down. But there is something that is blocking us from that abundant life: sin. Sin is not only manifested through our actions, but it is the disposition of our hearts: “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). This shows us that there is no such thing as a “good person”: “None is righteous, no, not one,” (Romans 3:10).
Compared to your neighbor, you may consider yourself “a good person.” But compared to a holy God, you have no shot. Because God is holy, and we are sinful, we have a problem. The solution to this problem is the good news of the Gospel, through Jesus Christ: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We are saved by grace alone, through faith in the work of Christ on the cross, who took on our sin and gave us his righteousness before God.
When you encounter Christ and say yes to him, you are adopted into the family of God. But this is not second-class citizenship, rather our place in God’s family is completely secure in Christ, and we are sealed with his Spirit. It is only through placing all your hope and faith in Jesus that we are saved and can have abundant life with Christ.