Football is Life, part III: what Leo Messi can teach us about Jesus (expect the unexpected)

This is a picture of Leo Messi – the greatest footballer to ever live – at the start of his career with FC Barcelona.

Mr Messi

Lionel Messi is on another footballing planet to every other person who’s ever lived.

Thierry Henry no-less, said this: “Sometimes I ask myself if Messi is human”.

This video gives a glimpse of why the world’s greatest footballers say things like that about Lionel…

One of the most wonderful things about Lionel Messi is – I think – that if he was wearing normal clothes and turned up to perhaps read the gas-meter of the house of someone who knew nothing about football, they probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

Messi does not look like Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Jack Grealish or Thierry Henry.

In the words of someone I once knew seeing Leo Messi for the first time – “Is that him? He looks like an IT technician!”

Yet Messi was to fans of FC Barcelona, the messiah. He was a god. Untouchable. From another planet. Not quiet human, almost.

Leo Messi is a lot like Jesus.

Jesus – like Lionel Messi, but better

Jesus saved the world.

He genuinely was The Messiah.

He sorted things, so that every human being who ever lived could be rescued and live with a quality of life that is one of deep, enduring peace and joy. And what Jesus did meant that life can start for any human right now – and then will carry on forever after they die their earthly death.

Jesus is the GOAT.

Jesus wasn’t what people were expecting

Just like Leo Messi may not be what you’d expect the world’s greatest ever footballer to look like…

Jesus’s birth took place in a cow shed, round the back of a pub. A cold and draughty place.

The smell of bovine excrement in the air.

A donkey was eee-orr-ing only a few feet away from Jesus’s mum when she was in the final moments of labour.

The floor was covered in straw, partly soaked in donkey-urine and oxen-feaces.

In the cow shed was a feeding trough that the animals ate their food from. That’s where Jesus was put when he came out.

This baby went on to save the world.

He saved the world by willingly choosing a course of action that included this…

As a man in his mid-30s, he was cruelly, horrifically and unjustly executed by being stripped naked; having a ring of sharp, thorny branches pressed into his scalp so hard that he bled; and then attached by having iron nails hammered through his wrists to a plank of wood, which was held up before a madding, expletive-shouting crowd who wanted to scornfully watch this man’s life slip away.

As this was all happening, he asked God to forgive the people who were killing him.

He died.

He was dead for around 36 hours.

Then he came back to life again, because God brought him back to life. Because Jesus was God, in human form.

Real, genuine, flesh and blood, human form.

Jesus’s resurrection proved that God is more powerful than anything, or anyone, ever.

Jesus’s forgiveness and compassion – His refusal to hate people – proved that God is merciful, loving and kind.

Jesus’s willingness to choose the route He did proves that love is brave, courageous, never gives up, is selfless. Jesus was the toughest man ever.

Jesus went through all that unspeakable agony to save other human beings. To save them from living the kind of lives that they didn’t even want to be living.

Jesus did all this so that people – everyone – could enjoy truly joyful, peaceful, fulfilling lives. Lives of wonderful and never-ending quality.

Jesus was God who came to earth as a real human being, to save other people from the kind of lives they didn’t even want.

Jesus did this because God loves people.

He loves you. He loves me. He loves everyone.

That’s why it’s worth devoting your whole life – every bit of it – to following Jesus.Why go less than all-in when there’s something this good freely offered to you?

“Come!” say the Spirit and the Bride. Whoever hears, echo, “Come!” Is anyone thirsty? Come! All who will, come and drink, Drink freely of the Water of Life! —Revelation 22:17 (The Message paraphrase)

Water is Life: I was given this bottle of water – for free – from the players’ fridge in the home dressing room at Villa Park.

Starting following Jesus is like hitting life’s reset button

The IT technician analogy is actually quite a good one here, ironically.

When you start following Jesus, it’s like turning the computer that is your life off and on again.

You hit the reset button.

Your wrongdoings – the things that have caused the errors and bugs in your slow-running system – are cleaned away. They are gone, and now the computer of your life can begin a journey back up to operating at full speed again.

The computer of your life can then function to the full potential that its manufacturer created it to. It can start to do the amazing things, perform the near miraculous tasks and output the most wonderful pieces of world-advancing work that it always had the capability of, deep down.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” —Ephesians 2:10

To start this process, it was as simple as pressing the reset button.

Please, follow this advice

Give your life – wholesale, everything, totally and completely – to Jesus.

Like turning your computer off and on again, this might appear a bit of a nerve-wracking or maybe even incredibly scary thing to do.

But it’s Jesus asking you to do this – and remember what He did. So of course you can trust everything He says – because not only is He the most competent human being in history (He is God, after all), but He was also the most loving human being in history (He is God, after all).

Please take that step of faith, right now. Why wait?

To do so would a bit like if Leo Messi knocking on your front door right now, and instead of asking to read the meter, inviting you to go out for a kick-around with him in the park.

It’s a complete no-brainer.

Enjoy it!

David