Somebody left a card in your door
It is six stops long and it all comes out of one letter, written to people in Rome about two thousand years ago by a man who had been the last person anybody expected to write it.
Nobody is watching you read this. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to buy. If you get halfway down and close it, that is fine, and we still prayed for your house this morning.
Start the roadStop one Where everybody starts
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Romans 3:23
We have to start with the word that makes people close the tab. Sin is not a list of bad habits somebody invented to make you feel small. It is the distance between the person you were made to be and the person you actually are, and nobody had to explain the size of that gap to you. You already know it. You have known it since you were young.
The kindest word in that verse is "all." You are not the exception and you are not the worst one. Whatever you are carrying right now, you are standing in the same room as every person who has ever lived, including the two who knocked on your door this morning.
Stop two What it actually costs
"For the wages of sin is death."
Romans 6:23, first half
Wages are not a punishment. Wages are what you earn. This is not God losing His temper, it is the honest price of living cut off from the One who made you, the way a branch pays a price for being off the tree.
And death here is bigger than a heart stopping. It is the separation you have already felt. That low hum that says something is wrong and you cannot fix it, no matter how good a week you have, no matter how much you get done, no matter who tells you that you are a good person.
Stop three The turn in the road
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 5:8
Read when He came. Not after you cleaned up. Not once you quit the thing, fixed the marriage, got the temper under control, started going somewhere on Sunday. While. While you were still in the middle of all of it.
That is the part most people have never been told. God did not stand at the end of the road waiting to see if you would walk it. He came down the road to get you, and it cost Him His Son, and He did it while you were still facing the other way.
Stop four What He is offering
"But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 6:23, second half
Same verse as the bad news. That is not an accident. The sentence that tells you the price is the same sentence that tells you it has been paid.
Free gift is the part people trip over, because most of us would rather owe than receive. We want a payment plan. We want to earn it so it belongs to us. But a gift is only ever yours when you stop negotiating and take it.
Stop five How a person takes it
"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
Romans 10:9
Two things, and neither one is a performance. Say it out loud, because something settles in a person when they stop thinking a thing and start saying it. And believe it, actually believe He walked out of that grave.
We are not going to soften that. If He stayed dead, none of this is worth four minutes of your afternoon. If He got up, then everything you thought was settled about your life is open again.
Stop six Who it is for
"For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Romans 10:13
Everyone. Not the qualified. Not the churched. Not the ones who have never done what you have done.
We have knocked on a lot of doors. We have sat on porches with people in the worst week of their lives and people who had not spoken to God in forty years and people who were certain they had used up whatever they had. We have never once met the person this verse did not cover. It covers whoever you are, reading this, wherever you are standing right now, with all of your history still attached.
There are no magic words. A prayer does not save anybody. Jesus does. But out loud is how people have always turned, so if you want to turn, you can say this, or you can throw it out and say your own in your own words. He is not grading the sentences.
"God, I am done pretending I am fine.
I have sinned and I cannot fix it myself.
I believe Jesus died for me and that You raised Him from the dead.
Forgive me. I am giving You the rest of my life.
Jesus, be my Lord. Amen."
Not when you feel it. Not when you have proven it for six months. Not after you have earned your way back. Now, while you are still standing wherever you are standing.
"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Romans 8:1
"Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:38–39
Pick whichever one is true. There is no wrong answer here and nobody is going to chase you.
Not a crowd. One person who knows you. Something about saying it to a human being makes it stop being a private thought.
Not Genesis, not Revelation. John. It is short, it is about Jesus, and it will take you a couple of weeks at a chapter a day.
Because He is. No special words, no posture, no time of day. Just talk, the way you would to somebody in the passenger seat.
Nobody makes it alone and nobody was supposed to. If you tell us your ZIP code we will point you to a church near you, and we get nothing out of which one you pick.
There is also a prayer wall full of strangers asking for help. If you want something to do with what just happened, go pray for one of them.