THE STORY

At the heart of God Loves Kingsgate is a story. It’s why we exist. And this story is so compelling and beautiful to us that we want everyone to hear it. More than that, we want everyone to know and enjoy the main character in this story: God. You’re in this story too. We all are. 

 

It's actually the main story that all of us play a part in. At the center of this story is a very real and a very kind God. He's the one who made everything, including all of us. And God made us with a specific design in mind, to know him and to enjoy him as God. That's why he gave us this world. He wanted to show us that he really is God and that he loves us. This means that every single thing we have in our lives is from him.

 

The tragedy, however, is that we've taken those things and made them into the one thing they're not: God. Like a child who loves the gift more than the parent who gave it, in our hearts we have pushed God to the side and we live as though he isn't there, giving our attention to the things he's given us rather than to him. In fact, many of us may get through an entire day without even considering him, or the fact that everything, from the food we eat to the air we breath and even the joy of seeing people and places we love, is a gift from God.

 

If we're honest with ourselves, we know this is wrong. Dead wrong, in fact. No one should be treated like this, especially God, who is the Giver of all things. If God, who is profoundly worthy of our love and affection, wanted to treat us with fairness and justice, he might be inclined to stop the story, and end it right here, treating us the same way we've treated him. In fact, he would be in the right to take away everything he's given us forever, including any joy we might have.

 

But although God should do that, he hasn't. Instead, God chose to enter into our part of the story, becoming the man in history known as Jesus Christ. According to Scripture, Jesus was God in the flesh, fully God and fully human. He infiltrated our world not only to teach us love, but to bring us life by restoring our relationship with God so that we might enjoy him as he had always intended. But because of how we've treated God, there was only one way that this could happen. He would have to trade places with us. He would have to take the justice we deserved and give us the goodness we did not.

 

So he did. After living a life where he perfectly enjoyed God as his greatest joy, he gave that same joy to us. And in its place, he took the sin and shame from our treatment of God onto his own shoulders. And then, in the greatest single act of love this story would ever see, he died with arms outstretched on a cross, obliterating the sin and shame once and for all. Anyone who receives what God has done in Jesus, is pardoned and reconciled to him, so that they can enjoy him in the way he always intended to be enjoyed. And the last promise Jesus gave to those near him was that he would return one day, to put an end to all pain and suffering, bringing a tragic and eternal fate to those who have ignored his gracious plea and ushering in a triumphant and endless joy for those who have accepted it.

 

The turning point of this story is called the gospel, which means "good news." The whole point of the good news is God. There is nothing like God in the cosmos, and yet our hearts are naturally inclined to ignore him and embrace other things in his place. The truth is that everyone wants to be happy. We were made that way. But tragically, we have replaced the Source of all happiness with things that can never ultimately give us the happiness we were made for. The gospel is the only solution to this devastating problem we all face. By trusting in what Jesus accomplished on the cross and by asking God for the forgiveness he freely offers, we receive not only forgiveness from God, but we receive God himself. And if every good gift is merely a glimpse into the heart of this Giver, then why would we desire to be preoccupied with such small, trivial things, when the source of all goodness has given himself to us?

 

Romans 5:8 says: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." This is the heart of God Loves Kingsgate. We love because he first loved us. And we want nothing more than to show this love to you and everyone who belongs to the community of Kingsgate.