Perhaps you know the story of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army.

When WW2 ended, it was a time of great joy and celebration. Prisoners were set free, and millions of soldiers went home to their families.

But not Lt. Onoda. The dutiful Onoda did not believe broadcasts announcing the end of the war, so for the next 29 years he hid in the jungles of the Philippines refusing to come home.

Knowing he was still out there, the authorities tried to reach him with the news. However, Onoda dismissed leaflets left by the islanders as enemy propaganda. He considered letters, family photos, and newspapers dropped from planes as nothing more than clever tricks.

Eventually, the Japanese Government sent Onoda’s former commanding officer into the jungle with orders for him to stand down. Relieved of duty, Onoda emptied the bullets from his rifle and turned in his weapon. For him the war was finally over. He returned home to a hero’s welcome.

For three decades Lt. Onoda was engaged in a war that existed only in his mind against an imaginary enemy he feared and distrusted.

Sadly, this is how some people relate to God.

Alienated in their minds

Some people are opposed to God in their minds or they think God is gunning for them on account of their sin. They have not heard there has been a cessation of hostilities, that the war has been won and the Prince of Peace now sits on the throne.

Ignorant of this good news and fearful of God they are lying low in the jungles of religion or self-deception.

God hates them—or so they think. His anger is mounting. So they live under a lie, refusing to come home.

In ten years as a pastor and forty years as a churchgoer I have met thousands of believers who tell you they believe the gospel, but their lives reveal a different story.

Instead of reaping from the gospel of peace, they are plowing the hard ground of D.I.Y. religion. Instead of drawing with joy from the wells of salvation, they are baking bricks in the pits of performance-based churchianity.

They may be smiling on the outside, but on the inside they are anxious, insecure, and battling with guilt and condemnation. Fearful of upsetting a touchy God they are trying to do the right thing and make themselves pleasing to the Lord. But since they are never sure if they have done enough they have no peace.

Others run hard after the favor of God but they never seem to arrive. They study the scriptures, fast and pray, and do all they are told, but the promised blessings of the Christian life—God’s forgiveness, acceptance, provision and so on—always seem just out of reach.

Yo-yo believers

Squeezed between the demands of a holy God who expects nothing short of perfection and the flawed performance of their own broken lives, Christians are among the most neurotic people on the planet. Like yo-yos they are up one day but down the next. They are testifying on Sunday but confessing on Monday.

Each time they stumble they promise Jesus they will try harder next time but it’s no use. They feel like frauds and wonder what will happen to them when their shortcomings are eventually exposed.

The number one reason why many Christians are joyless and tired is because they have never heard the gospel of grace. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true—the gospel is almost never preached.

Visit any church or switch on a Christian TV channel and chances are you will hear anything and everything but the undiluted gospel. You will hear a mixed gospel that leaves people fearful and insecure.

Don’t blame the preachers. Many of them are doing the best they can. But they can’t give what they haven’t got, and they can’t preach what they haven’t heard.

The gospel is good news. This is what the word “gospel” literally means: good news. By definition, any gospel that leaves you fearful of an angry and judgmental God is no gospel at all. It is not good news.

Any gospel that leaves you insecure and uncertain, forever wondering, Am I accepted? Am I forgiven? is not good news.

Any gospel that demands you sign up for a lifetime of progressive sanctification and yet offers no guarantee that you will ever make it, is not good news.

Any gospel that forces cripples to jump through hoops of religious performance is no gospel at all.

And now for the news…

The gospel is the glad and merry news that God is good, he loves you, and he will happily give up everything he has so he can have you.

Contrary to popular belief, God is not mad at you. He is not even in a bad mood. The good news declares that God is happy, he is for you, and he wants to share his life with you forever.

Jesus is the proof.

On the cross God showed that he loved us while we were sinners and that he would rather die than live without us. And through the resurrection he proved that nothing—not even death—can separate us from the love that is ours in Jesus Christ.

Through our representative Jesus our heavenly Father has joined himself to us, promising never to leave nor forsake us. We stand secure, not on our feeble promises to him, but on his unbreakable promises to us.

And that’s it: God loves you and wants to be with you.

It’s simple but it’s the biggest truth in the universe. We will spend eternity discovering in a billion different ways the limitless expressions of his unending love. This is what we were made for—to receive and respond to his divine love. This is the fundamental law of our existence and the reason for our being.

This is the best news you ever heard.

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Extracted from Out of the Jungle: Why the Good News May Be the Best News You Never Heard, a free ebook you get when you sign up as a subscriber to Escape to Reality.