Earlier today I was thinking about sharing a spiritual truth that I had recently learned about. In the middle of thinking about it, I realized I was trying to keep it from sounding offensive in the way I would present it. I found myself dumbing it down, softening the truth, trying to make it sound more appealing. I had to stop and check myself. I was reminded of something that I think many Christians forget or try to avoid when thinking about our faith and sharing what we believe with others who have not heard about our savior. The Gospel IS offensive.

Think about it. If you’ve never heard the story of the gospel, the story of Jesus, it’s pretty offensive. The gospel tells us that we in our flesh are evil, we’re sinners, we deserve death. We’ve sinned against a holy, eternal God and there is nothing we can do to try to earn His forgiveness or earn our way back into a relationship with God. We need help. We need a savior. We have to set aside our strength and be weak before God and let him help us. (1 Cor 12:9-10)

So yes, the gospel is offensive. It’s true, in our flesh we are selfish, self-righteous, sinful. We turned away from God and instead of giving glory to our worthy Creator, we praised creation. We bought into the lie that we’ll find freedom and satisfaction in serving our own desires through created beings and things. Humans spend their lives trying to find happiness and trying to please themselves. Many people see the Christian life as a rule book, as a list of dos and don’ts, as restraining.

But the ironic truth is that until we know and experience the gospel’s saving grace, we are actually enslaved to our own passions. God’s intention when he created the world was for us to be in a relationship with him, to know him and experience his goodness and his glory. He created us to worship him and to find ultimate satisfaction and joy in Him. So when humanity sinned and turned away from Him, He turned us over to our fleshly and sinful desires. (Romans 1:24-25). God doesn’t force us to love him or choose him. He let us have what we wanted; what we thought we needed to satisfy ourselves. So because we lost that satisfying relationship with God in the garden of Eden, we were left to try to satisfy ourselves in whatever way we thought was best. But it wasn’t fulfilling, it was never lasting, it was temporary happiness that left us only searching for more through a never ending cycle of our search for pleasure, satisfaction, and purpose.
(Sorry if I just ruined your day, but keep reading, I promise it gets better!)

So if the Gospel means good news, what is it? I think it can be summed up in a single sentence. Romans 5:8 says “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In the midst of our worst, God gave us his best. God sent His only Son, Jesus, to earth to die on a cross in our place as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He died the death we deserved, and he rose from the grave to offer us the life we didn’t deserve. Yes, God did turn us over to our sins, and he could have left us there. But he didn’t. He didn’t even wait for us to turn from our sins back to him before he died for us. He died for us, WHILE we were still in the depths of our sins.

So yes the gospel is offensive, but it’s more than that it’s beautiful. It’s freeing. Christ didn’t die for us to follow a rule book. He died to free us from the sinful desires we were enslaved too. Romans 6:14 says “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. He has forgiven us and offered us new life, better life; eternal life with God. He died to restore us into a right relationship with God again. And all we have to do is accept and receive the free gift of eternal life. There’s no cost on our side. He paid the price, and he bought us with his blood on the cross.

That’s the gospel. It’s beautiful. But in order for us to see the beauty of the gospel, we first have to see the offensiveness of it. In order to understand everything Jesus went through for us, we have to understand our sinfulness and how undeserving we are. The more we understand our sin, the more we understand and can appreciate His grace and praise Him. We will never be perfect on this side of Heaven. Even with new life in Christ, I still often find myself turning back to old habits or trying to find fulfillment myself. I still have to repent of my sins daily and I’m constantly working on releasing control to God, but I’m no longer ruled by sin or by the law, but by grace. Romans 5:1 says “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is nothing more freeing than the grace offered by our Father.

I’d be doing you a disservice if I wasn’t 100% honest about the whole gospel because I didn’t want to offend you. You deserve to hear the truth instead of a watered-down version of the gospel that may keep from hurting your pride, but it would do you no good in the long run. The joy I have experienced in knowing Jesus is incomparable to anything else on earth, and I want that for everyone else too. I want to share the beauty of the gospel even if that means sharing the offensiveness of the gospel too.

If you know me at all, even just a little bit, there is a good chance that you know about my love, okay “obsession”, with s’mores. Whether it’s an old-fashioned fire pit s’more with a roasted marshmallow, a microwave s’more with melted chocolate and a gooey marshmallow, or a variety of s’more desserts, I love them all. I think I’ve become associated with s’mores to my friends. People text me pictures or post links on my Facebook page of s’mores and s’more desserts. My friends have bought me s’more ingredients and made s’mores with me on my past two birthdays. One of my friends for Christmas gave me a s’more maker to use in the microwave. And my mom told me even today that she already envisions me having a s’more station at my wedding reception.

I always knew I liked s’mores, I mean obviously they’re delicious. But after what God showed me today, I now realize even more why I like them so much! God can use s’mores to point us to him and to teach us about him; specifically the trinity.

The trinity has always been a hard concept to grasp for anyone no matter their spiritual maturity. Humans use many metaphors and examples to try to understand and explain the trinity and how God can be one, but also three separate persons. But God showed me today how well a s’more can describe the trinity.

You can probably already see where I am going with this. But think about a s’more. There are three separate parts, the graham cracker, the marshmallow, and the chocolate. All three are separate ingredients. But all together they make a s’more. You need all three, because without one of them, it’s not a s’more. That’s how God works too. There is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three are separate beings, but you need all three to make up God. Without any of these qualities, God would not be the God we know and worship.

Okay now bear with me on this next part. After I had this realization that my favorite dessert was really just the trinity in the form of food, I began thinking about the three parts and which ingredient represented which part of God. Now, since I make s’mores mostly in the microwave out of convenience, I pictured my s’more with the melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow.

The chocolate represents Jesus. In the microwave, the hershey’s chocolate changes composition from its hardened state to melted. I believe this represents Jesus when he came to earth as a man. Fully God, but fully human. He changed his state to become man so that he could come and live a perfect life and die in our place for our sins.

The marshmallow represents the Holy Spirit. The sticky, gooey marshmallow is what holds the whole s’more together. I’ve always kind of pictured the Holy Spirit as the spirit connecting God the Father and Jesus. In fact, Jesus’ ministry on earth began when God the Father anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. The Holy Spirit came on Jesus and was with him during his entire ministry on earth. (Acts 10:38). Similarly, the marshmallow will stick to the hershey’s and they become attached after being heated up in the microwave. All believers are promised the Holy Spirit as their helper when they accept Jesus Christ as their savior. The Spirit is said to even intercede for us when we pray to God. (Romans 8:26). And in the same way that the Holy Spirit stayed with Jesus, God promises that the Holy Spirit will be with us forever. (John 14:16)

The graham cracker represents God the Father. The graham cracker holds the chocolate and marshmallow in place. When you cook a s’more in the microwave, the marshmallow gets real big and the chocolate melts. But when you take it out, the pressure of the graham cracker subdues the marshmallow back in place. I would suggest that the graham cracker has authority in the overall s’more. Jesus stated that God had authority over him when he was on earth. John 8:28 says, “So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”

God has hidden himself all over this world for our enjoyment of finding him and knowing him a little more intimately each time we learn something new. So I shouldn’t be too surprised that I found him in s’mores today. He knows me well. He created me with a love for s’mores to ultimately point me to Him. Everything was created to point glory back to God, so I guess I found one way that s’mores can do just that.

I’ve always dreamed of being able to do what I love for a living. If one day I can own a s’mores business and share the gospel through making and selling s’more desserts, I’d be pretty lucky.

This summer I have been living at home and working in an 8-5 internship. Although it doesn’t seem to compare to many of my friends’ summers of travelling abroad, working at camps, or doing other cool things that fill my instagram daily and shamefully make me jealous here and there, I know that this is where God has placed me for the time being.

It’s not all bad. I’ve gotten to reconnect with high school friends who are back in Houston and spend time at the lake with family and friends on some weekends. But for the most part, it has been kind of a lonely summer; however I mean that in the best way possible. It’s been the best thing for me.

The quietness in the back corner of my office, the lunch breaks where I often eat alone, the 30 minute commutes to and from work, and the many times in my room in the evenings have allowed God to have me all to himself. That’s something that I don’t allow God to do often enough during the school year when I’m surrounded by friends and things to do 24/7. Towards the end of last semester I became very aware that I was scheduling God around my plans and my time when I should have been scheduling everything else around God and my time with him. I knew I needed to change that, but I didn’t want to. I mean I wanted to, but I didn’t want to have to sacrifice or change anything.

Thankfully God took control and made it impossible to escape Him. He has become my best friend. He is my go-to companion. He’s the one I talk to now on my drives to work. He’s the one who accompanies me to lunch  each day through reading his word and books that have reshaped my view of who my Father is. God has been teaching me so much this summer, and it’s only made me want to know more. It’s only made me feel like I have less answers than before. I’m more perplexed by God than ever, but its a good feeling. The more I know, the more I want to know, and the more I fall in love with my Father and savior.

I thought I had a good grasp on who God was. I thought I understood wisdom. I thought I understood the Holy Spirit. But he’s teaching me that He is so much bigger than I can ever try to fathom. He will not be confined to any box I try to put him in. He is infinite and his ways are limitless. He knows no boundaries.

I’ve learned to always go to scripture above anything else when searching for truth, but his word isn’t all the truth. He will not be confined to the box of scripture that I try to put Him in. For example, I have been learning a lot about physical healing and the different ways in which God heals. But God isn’t confined to healing only in the ways that the Bible talks about. John 21:25 even says “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”  He has the power and authority to heal in whatever way he pleases-whether it is in a single instance through a person who has been given the gift of healing, or through a long process of chemotherapy and thousands of prayers over one person who has life-threatening cancer. In the Bible, Jesus sometimes healed someone because of their faith or sometimes because of their friends’ faith, or even if someone had no faith at all. We don’t get to decide what God can or can’t do or even what God will do or how he will do it. Who am I to decide the ways in which God moves and tell someone else “No, I don’t think God heals that way”?

I would love to share with you everything that God has been teaching me this summer, but I don’t think that’s the point of this post. I just want to encourage you to seek after God and his truth. There is incomparable joy in knowing God intimately. We won’t ever know all the answers, but we’ll never know what we could know if we don’t seek after it. It doesn’t matter where you are this summer, whether you are travelling the world and seeing all of God’s creation or sitting in an office every day like me. I’ve learned God can speak to you and draw you to him anywhere, anytime if you just allow him; if you just open up his word. I never would have thought that I would have fallen so in love with Jesus in the situation that I am in this summer-doing the same mundane things every day. But  once again, who am I to decide the ways in which God works? God doesn’t need any crazy, awe-inspiring experiences to draw us to himself. Yes, sometimes he uses those experiences, but sometimes he uses an 8-5 internship and a quiet summer.

Psalm 16:11 is a verse that I have written on a sticky note next to my computer at work, and I have never found it more true than this summer. It says “You will make known to me the path of life; In your presence if fullness of joy; in your right hand there are pleasures forever.”

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7