Have you seen the beaming smile of a baby responding to the love of its parent? We were created to enjoy it forever! But for most people, as we "mature" through life this smile eventually fades into loneliness, defeat, and despair.

Popular Christianity tells us that "grace" is the news that we can simply "receive forgiveness so we can go to Heaven". Not only does this fail to make sense of most of the Bible, it leaves us living defeated, heartbroken lives.

Fortunately, God is bigger and better than that! He knows we need a kind of power that is just not in us. Therefore, He will also heal us; evict oppressing spirits; break the power of sin in us; Rebirth us with an infusion of His own nature, and empower us. Guilt, shame, and fear are annihilated.

Christ is the Firstborn of this second mankind, and He said, "Follow me". The Gospel announces that the way is open to come after Him-in His lineage and His inheritance. The cost is life-exchange, but it brings the ultimate return.

In Follow the Firstborn, Jon Farmer has curated about 70 passages that cause your Bible to no longer be a mysterious puzzle. If you hunger to partake in the nature of God, then the Word of God will take root in you; you will be filled and truly satisfied... now. Your smile shall return now, as it has for so many!

Jon is a Gospel equipper at Bethel City Church near Raleigh, North Carolina.