Many people seem to think that this means you can get everything you want from God, but that’s not the message in this verse. The message is when you desire God and His ways more than your own, He will give you the desires of your heart. In other words, when your desires and God’s desires for you line up together you will get the assured promises that He wants for you.
Living your life here as if God owes you something is the biggest lie that Satan ever put into the world. God doesn’t owe us anything but we owe Him everything! He provides the air that we breathe and the sunlight for our world to produce food along with the rain to grow all of the vegetables and herbs which make our food taste good. Seek your salvation in Jesus Christ and your appreciation for Him will be more than you can understand. He gives us the joy that our soul seeks every day and the assurance that eternity is with Him.
Spiritually. Do you walk on your path thinking that you will get to heaven your way? Have you heard about Jesus and walking in His footsteps like His disciples did? Which way will you go?
Many people today hear about Jesus and they hear a very restrictive message. One with all kinds of rules and things that you can’t do or shouldn’t do if you want to go to heaven. Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me“, so what does that really mean? It means that if you want to go to heaven you have to believe in Him for your salvation and ask Him to change your heart so you can be an ambassador for Him!
If you are walking on your own path and your own ideas about being a good person and basing your salvation on being a good Christian who has been in church for their whole life, you will find yourself on a very slippery slope to hell. Doing “church” and being a good person or at least as good as the person next to you in the church is the devil’s deception. You have to pattern your life by following Jesus and asking Him to help you to be better than you were because only the Holy Spirit can make that change in your heart and your life. You can’t do it on your own!
When Jesus said that the pathway to heaven is narrow He meant exactly what He said. The road which leads people to hell but it looks like the road to heaven, that is the one that Satan is leading many people down. They go to church and give their tithes and they sing the songs and they study their Bibles on a certain night during the week but they aren’t being taught about the salvation that Jesus brings. They are being told that they can get to heaven doing just what they are doing and nothing more. They’re not being told that Jesus is the way to salvation and that He died to save them from hell. They’re not being taught that God provided the way to salvation through Jesus Christ because He is the only way for salvation.
The abundant life that Jesus promised is in eternity. We are not promised wealth or an easy life. Jesus said that we would face troubles in this life because of our faith in Him but He said “don’t be troubled because I have overcome the world“. Seek Him because He is your only way to gain access to eternity in heaven.
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
1 John 2:15-17 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1jn.2.15-17.KJV
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/2ti.3.1-5.KJV
God’s law shows us what we can’t do. You cannot keep it perfectly like Jesus did but if you put your faith in Jesus and live your life daily by His law and His teachings you can be a blessing to those around you. I don’t mean that you will be able to keep the ten commandments perfectly even after you have been born again but you can strive toward that goal. When you break one of them you are guilty of breaking all of them. God doesn’t place one commandment above another. One sin will send you to hell, in particular the sin of rejecting Jesus as your Savior.
If you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit convicting you of your sins, whatever they might be, please don’t turn away from this call from God! Remember, we don’t have a promise of living until a certain day or year, you may not live through tonight, I may not be here tomorrow either. So when the conviction from the Holy Spirit comes to you, act on it! Seek Jesus as your Savior and ask Him into your life. Allow Him to change your life so that you can live, not only in this life but in the Life to come.
“It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). You and I can’t escape the judgment completely. Christians will be judged for what they did after they gave their heart and their life to Jesus. Those who did not give their heart to Jesus and live the rest of their life any way they chose to will be judged for one decision and that is the rejection of Jesus. If you have been born again, your eternity with Him is certain but if you have lived your life in a Christian family and you’ve been to church every day that there were services but you have never given your heart to Jesus…what then? You’ve done all of the things needed to be seen as a Christian, why aren’t you saved?
You have washed your life in the Word as it is preached in your church. You have read the Bible and committed some scripture to memory, isn’t that enough? No it isn’t! You have gone through all of the outward rituals that everyone in your church can see but if Jesus isn’t in your heart and hasn’t been invited and received to cleanse your heart then you are like a pig that has had a bath. You are clean on the outside but your heart has not changed. When you release that pig after it is cleaned it will go right back to the mud and wallow in it just as before. You cannot make yourself into a Christian by going to church and reading the Bible. Jesus has to come, after being invited, into your heart and change you into a new creation. Once this is done, you won’t feel right if you try to go back to your old way of living. You will have a hunger for God’s Word and you will feel better inside when you read it and the Holy Spirit will help you understand it. You will be a sinner saved by the grace and mercy of God!
The wealth that we have from being adopted into God’s family because we accepted His invitation is beyond any imagining that we can do here on Earth. The foundation of the City of God is all kinds of precious stones and the pavement of Heaven is gold so pure that you could see through it to the foundation. God loves you, each one of you, enough that He sent His Son to die on a Roman cross so you could be saved and sanctified by His blood.
You might ask me, “What do you mean…do I believe?” If you have faith in God and what He can do and has done, do you believe in Jesus for your salvation? There are many in America who claim to know Jesus but many only know about Him. The salvation that they need…that we all need is found only when you follow Him every day. Knowing about Jesus from hearing a sermon or going to Sunday school or a Bible study is better than the alternative but even the demons in hell and Satan himself knows about Jesus.
After Jesus came back from the dead Thomas didn’t believe…wouldn’t believe until he saw Him with his own eyes and touched Him. Jesus said to him “blessed are they who will believe even though they don’t see Me”. I know that I paraphrased His answer to Thomas but only His disciples saw Him in the flesh and those who listened to His teachings. We are separated by two thousand years from His physical presence and yet there are many that have come to know Him and are still coming to know Him as their Savior today!
How is this possible? Because the Holy Spirit and God the Father cause it to be so. We are drawn to the saving knowledge of Jesus as our Savior not because of our choice one day but by the Holy Spirit convicting us to realize that we need salvation in the first place. Without that conviction we, including me, would still be lost and living our lives as sinners just as we were before. But God saw that I could be useful in His Kingdom in some small way and He called me, touched me and convicted me to come to Jesus for my salvation. It was not my decision alone!
When someone realizes that they are in need of salvation all they need to do is confess their sins and ask Jesus to come into their heart and their life to change their life completely. Being a true follower of Jesus, one who knows Him as their Savior truly will be changed from the inside so that others will know for sure that they cannot explain. You will never be the same again because as Paul wrote, “you will be a new creation“. Your old way of life has passed away when you accept Jesus as your Savior, so make sure that you read the Bible prayerfully and thank Him for saving you from your sins every day.
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/heb.4.14-16.KJV
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:10-12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/1ti.6.10-12.KJV
Begin your day with prayer and thanksgiving for the blessings that you have. Whether it be much or little, be satisfied with what you have and pray that you do not covet the things of others. In the world today it’s hard not to want the things that those around you have. But consider this: store up treasure in Heaven where it cannot be stolen.
How can you store up treasure in Heaven? By giving your time to others or giving a portion of your income to the church or some worthy cause, this is how you gain treasure in Heaven. Be careful to give only to charities that do what they say and don’t give to some charity that you can’t research their true background.
Seek the Lord with your heart and read His Word to learn more about Him. When you feel the Holy Spirit touching your heart and you feel that conviction that you need Jesus as your Savior, give your heart to Him. God has a plan for your life so plan to give your heart to Him.
The Living Message of Christ 