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In 2017, I met Jack when he was a second year student at the sports university. We spent time together often and I talked about Jesus with him many times over the years. He’s encountered some of you over the years during our english camps as well. He spent the last couple of years in Australia on a working visa and he’s leaving today for Japan to work for 5 months as a ski instructor. He’s 28 years old now. Yesterday we got lunch before he left. We sat down to eat and started catching up. I wasn’t thinking and just started taking a few bites, Jack just sat there. Finally he said, don’t we need to pray? I said, of course we can, are you a Christian now? He said, no, not yet. I said, I want to talk with you about that in a little while.
After we ate, I shared the story of the Bible with Him. How God wants to restore our relationship and give us live a life of meaning and hope forever.
One thing that Jack had never heard or understood before was what the sacrifices in the Old Testament meant. Why there had to be blood. We talked at length about the cost for disobeying God. I could see the moment he understood - when the Holy Spirit helped him understand the value of Jesus’ blood. How valuable it was that God would offer the blood of his son as a substitute for us.
Some of you may remember the story of John Paul Getty, the oil tycoon. He was the Elon Musk of the 1970’s. One of his 13 grandsons was kidnapped in 1973 and held by the Italian mafia for a 17 million dollar ransom. Getty refused to pay. He looked at his grandson and said, your value to me is not enough, I won’t pay. It’s not worth it.
Jesus looked at us and said we were valuable to him, a treasure worth having. So he willingly paid the ransom with the most precious thing in the universe, his blood.
Please pray for Jack today that he would know how valuable he is to God. And that he would understand and believe in Jesus sacrifice for him.
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