Welcome to my blog!

Hello, everyone! Welcome to my blog! It's been a few years since I blogged, but I'm really excited about doing it again! This blog gives me the ability to share with all of you what God is revealing to me between books and speaking engagements. It's amazing how our world has changed just during my lifetime, and I am grateful for the opportunities that technology offers us now.

So, I'll jump right in. The reason I decided to call this "Jill's Blog for Followers and Seekers Alike" stems from my love of both my fellow Jesus followers and those who do not believe as I do. I love to write about Jesus because from my own experiences, it is obvious that he has been grossly misrepresented for a long time by a lot of people who have tried to make him into who they want him to be. They use this fake Jesus to hurt or control others. However, the real Jesus has no desire to hurt or control anyone.

This message is important for both those who follow Jesus and those who don't. For the Jesus follower you need to know the real Jesus so that you can truly live out his plan for our world and our lives through an intimate relationship with him. Jesus is love, love, love, and if you are presenting him as anything other than that, you are doing him a great disservice, and you are turning people away from him. As for those who do not follow Jesus, you also need to know the real Jesus. You may think he is irrelevant to you, but he has an incredible opportunity for all of us, including you. You've probably been hearing about the fake Jesus (from people calling themselves Christians) your whole life, and that misinformation is stopping you from being able to know the real Jesus, making it impossible for you to encounter him, much less have a relationship with him. If I were you, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with that Jesus, either. He's terrible! He just wants to send people to Hell!

First, for those who don't know for sure, Jesus was a real person. There's plenty of references to him in both religious texts (Christian and non-Christian) and secular texts. Along with the writings of the Apostle Paul and the four gospel accounts (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the bible), look up such writers as Thallus, Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, and Celsus. All of their historical accounts discuss Jesus of Nazareth, also called the Christ. There's even a very interesting medieval Jewish retelling of the life of Jesus called The Toledot Yeshu. Even though it attempts to totally discount the story of Jesus as the Messiah, it gives an abundance of details (warped from the original story) about the life of this man, Jesus the Nazarene. It does a beautiful job of showing us that Jesus was, in fact, a real person who has been reeking havoc for the Jews ever since his birth.

Second, here's something you need to know about the real Jesus. He is the greatest lover who has ever lived. You can take my word for it, or you can go and do all the research I've done to come to your own conclusion. However, you're probably going to find, as I did, that Jesus is the greatest lover who has ever lived. His love is greater than most people realize or understand, even those who claim to follow him. It transcends most of anything I've ever been told about him. The experience of it is amazing, and the wisdom that it brings to the person willing to love him back fully is priceless. However, it is also controversial, mostly (ironically) to Christians who don't understand it.

This is the place where I often find myself. For almost 15 years now, the Holy Spirit has been teaching me about himself, the Father, and especially Jesus. The more intimate my relationship with God becomes, the better I understand that He is so much more than what most of us think. There are certain "facts" of Christianity that the church (the all-inclusive body of Jesus followers) attempts to present as absolute God truth that don't make sense in light of a God who is love, of a man who would die for his enemies, of a spirit that cares about the intimate details of our lives.

In my following posts, I will share more about the truths that God has taught me and how they are really, really good news for all of us--followers and seekers alike! I hope you'll continue to join me!