So you’ve heard the Apostle Paul’s admonition to take your thoughts captive.

And you’ve also heard the world’s siren call to let your thoughts run free, and do whatever you want.

So why should you choose to bring your thought life in line with God’s Word? It’s simply this: Because God’s Son came to Earth and died a horrible death, so that you don’t have to. And he arose, alive again, so that you and I can live forever, with him.

Our part in all this? We just have to accept his free gift, and choose Jesus.

This is the story of the entire Bible, from cover to cover. From Alpha to Omega, you might even say. This is history. This is His story.

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Before time began, God had a plan to bring his creation, the human race, back into fellowship with himself. God knew that mankind would choose to disobey him, and that God’s absolute holiness required punishment for man’s disobedience, known to the world as “sin.”

So he decided that his Son, who was with God and who was God, would leave Heaven to come to Earth as a man, and suffer that punishment for all men. And when the time was right, Jesus came to Earth, born as a baby to a virgin in the humble Judean town of Bethlehem.

He lived a sinless life, the son of a carpenter. But in his 30th year, the time came for him to reveal who he was. And to teach us how to live in the process.

Jesus spoke about Scripture with authority, even though he’d received no formal training from any Jewish rabbi. To further prove to the people just who he was, he performed numerous miracles. He turned water into wine. He healed the sick, the crippled, the blind.

He raised the dead. More than once.

But the people in Israel at that time just didn’t understand. The Romans feared his political power. The Jewish leaders simply hated him, because Jesus dared to proclaim that their man-made rules hypocritically nullified God’s word in the Law of Moses just for the sake of Jewish tradition, and weren’t in line with Gods heart.

So the Jewish leaders had the Romans arrest Jesus on trumped-up charges. He underwent a mock trial, was brutally tortured, and was required to carry a heavy wooden cross through the streets of Jerusalem to a hill just outside the city walls. There, he was crucified, hung from that very same cross, where he died.

His body was laid in a donated tomb, and there it stayed until the morning of the third day. Then, around and in the empty tomb, angels announced that Jesus wasn’t there, but had risen from the dead. Over the next 40 days, the risen Jesus appeared numerous times to hundreds of people, and then on the 40th day, in front of his disciples, rose into Heaven, where he sits today at God’s right hand. Jesus defeated death, and he offers us the ability to defeat death, too. If we’ll only believe in him as our Lord and Savior.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Romans 10:9-10