Is Our Good News Good News?

Strikes me as odd sometimes that what we have to share with people isn't really good news to them. Isn't that a problem? Maybe it's because people are so far from God that they wouldn't know REAL good news if it stared them in the face... maybe, but that seems like a cop-out to me. I think that we should be able to offer people good news that they would perceive as good news--even if they don't want it yet. But how? What is the good news? Here's one way to share it:

1. There is a God who made everything, and he made you to know and experience incredible joy and happiness and lasting significance
2. None of us live at the level of joy and bliss that God created us to experience
3. The gap between where we live and where God intended us to live is because of sin. Your sin, because your faults and bad decisions bring misery and brokenness to life. Also the sins of others who bring pain and suffering into our lives.
4. God's heart is to remove sin from the world, and to heal us from its effects
5. We can’t fix the problem—we can’t fix ourselves or the world without help
6. In light of our inability to fix things, God does what we can't do. He comes in Jesus to show us how to live, but also to deal with what's wrong with the world. He takes on the pain and misery of sin and suffers its penalty so that we can be forgiven and start again new.
7. Jesus' life and death for us gives us a new start, but when we agree to follow him, we also receive his power and presence within our hearts, so that we are changed into new people from the inside out.
8. Filled with his strengthening power, we are given a commission to actually begin to fix what's wrong with the world. We become God's tools to reduce the pain and suffering in the world caused by sin.
9. A life that is lived to please God is infinitely better than a life we could live on our own. There is more happiness, more joy, more confidence of God's approval, more peace in our conscience, more sense of adventure, more feeling like we're part of something greater than ourselves.

Is this good news? Well, yes, sort of. But I don't think it does the gospel justice... not by a long shot.