Choose Jesus, Choose Life
By Roger Lipe
“And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.” -- John 17:3
On the final night of His life on Earth, Jesus and His disciples were together for the final time. He was in such emotional distress, looking at His forthcoming death in the face, that he asked His disciples to pray with him. As Jesus prayed, John the Apostle overheard and recorded Jesus’s prayer. He prayed about the nature of eternal life and how His followers would experience it.
Jesus said the way to pursue eternal life was to know the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ, who represented God’s presence on the Earth. If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we know the only true God and we have eternal life, now and forever.
The way to live eternally is to pursue a relationship with God. Jesus came to Earth specifically to make a way for us to both live eternally and to know the one true God through a relationship with Him.
- What do some people around you pursue in hope that it gives them eternal life?
- How would a person pursue a relationship with the one true God and with Jesus Christ?
- What does it mean to know Jesus and to receive eternal life?
- Share with others when and how you came into a relationship with the one true God through Jesus Christ.
John 3:16; John 10:10
“Father, in the same way that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I pray and pursue eternal life. Jesus said that eternal life was in knowing Jesus and knowing you, the only true God. I commit my life to knowing You, to serving You, and to living eternally with You. I pray and trust in the strong name of Jesus, Amen.”