For Christmas last year one of my kids gave me a book entitled “Stuff You Should Know.” The authors have been doing podcasts for over ten years about stuff they wondered about or that piqued their curiosity. This book comes from those discussions.

That title made me think about what stuff is really necessary for you to know.

God is in control.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Man messed up what should have been a perfect relationship with God.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23)

What we did and continue to do makes us deserving of eternal condemnation

“For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23a)

God was not content that man should perish, and His love led Him to do something about it.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Our forgiveness and life and salvation are all God’s doing, and He gives it to us freely.

“… but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23b)

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9)

I think you get my point. The stuff you REALLY need to know is in God’s Word. That is why I am constantly urging you to be in it, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it!

Noted theologian Karl Barth was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Barth allegedly said something like “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

That is the stuff you need to know.