Pastor Larry Sundin
Pastor Larry Sundin, Rock Springs Church
Often when someone who doesn’t know much about Rock Springs Church asks me what we’re all about, my favorite answer is to simply say that we’re a church that’s all about Jesus, making disciples of Jesus, and the Word of God. Often people ask me why Jesus is such a big deal to us. Let me give you a couple of reasons.
First, Only Jesus can show you what God is like. The book of Hebrews explains this phenomenon in this way: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word” Hebrews 1:3. In other words, when you look at Jesus, you see exactly what God is like. He is the radiance of God’s glory. He is the flower in full bloom. He is the fountain of God’s wisdom. He is the beauty of God’s goodness personified. Everything of God emanates from Jesus. When you take a long hard look at Jesus, you don’t see 99% of what God is like, you see all who God is in Jesus. In other words, Jesus is the human face of God.
That’s why Jesus is so important to us. Jesus makes God knowable to us. Through Jesus, you can know God personally.
Second, Only Jesus can offer you a whole new life. In the Gospel of John, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and offers her living water. At first, she struggles to understand how this water could satisfy her physical thirst. But soon Jesus reveals that He has come to satisfy the thirst in her soul. She had tried over and over to satisfy her deep longing through intimate relationships but had never found satisfaction. Now Jesus offered her water that would fulfill her deepest longings. He was offering her a chance at a whole new life with God.
Think of it this way: All of us have some idea of what will satisfy our deepest desires. We thirst after happiness so we drink at the well of experience thinking good times will quench our thirst. We thirst after intimacy so we drink at the well of relationships, believing that a lover will fulfill our souls. Or we thirst after significance, so we drink at the well of performance, thinking if we make ourselves look better, we’ll feel better about ourselves. But the Bible tells us that everything we think might fulfill us actually leaves us empty: “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” Jeremiah 2:13. So, Jesus has come to offer us a full and satisfying life with God. He offers us a life where we can get off the performance treadmill, where we can rest in the acceptance and delight of His love for us, and where we can run free in this life, He created us to live. That’s why Jesus has come. As He once said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” John 10:10.
These are just a couple of reasons why Jesus is such a big deal to us. But there are so many more. And if you’d like to find out more, why not join us some Sunday? You may just find what you’ve been thirsting for. Rock Springs Church gathers every Sunday at 9 a.m. in the Hermosa Ballroom. We’d love to have you join us!