Your turn
Repent and believe.
The ransom is paid, and a captive can't add to it. You can only receive it or refuse it. Jesus's first sermon says how to receive it, in one line: “Repent and believe the good news!” To repent is to turn around: away from the sin that held you, and toward God to live his way. To believe is to trust Jesus with your life, and with what happens when you die. His friend Lazarus had been in the tomb four days when Jesus told Lazarus's sister Martha:
I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die… Do you believe this?
Turning to God starts a whole new life, and the effort follows the rescue instead of buying it. Paul put it plainly: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” At Pentecost, Peter told the crowd, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” John the Baptist told people to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance”: share with the poor, stop cheating, stop shaking people down. And Isaiah had long before promised what God does when we turn:
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
So how do you start? Tell him you believe. Turn from what you know is wrong and ask him to forgive you. Then be baptized, and start following him alongside other Christians. Jesus promised, “whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”
Then this story is for you. In Jesus's parable of the prodigal son, the boy takes his share of the family money, wastes all of it, and ends up feeding pigs. Then he comes to his senses. “So he got up and went to his father.” The father doesn't wait at the door:
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Paul named thieves, drunkards, and swindlers, then told the church in Corinth, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed.” No one is too far off to come home.
Luke 15:11–24You found 0 of 16 pieces of evidence. Tap a faded one to go find it.
Questions, or want to talk? Email us: pastorproject2026@gmail.com