Have you ever been to an evangelical service anywhere and heard that it was simple to become a child of God? In many churches, you will never hear such a thing, but that is exactly what Jesus came to bring to everyone! The Jewish leaders of His day had over six hundred laws which they encouraged the people to keep (even though they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep them).
They asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment and He told them this: “Love the Lord with all of your mind, soul, body and strength and the second is like it; love your neighbor as yourself.” The law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Much simpler don’t you think?
Salvation comes only through faith and belief in Jesus and the atonement which He bought for us with His blood and His resurrection from the tomb. Faith comes from hearing the Word preached and your soul responding to it, then belief comes when the Holy Spirit touches your heart and breaks it, showing you where you have failed to be like Jesus in your life. Why does it happen this way?
Because until it is broken just a little, there is no opening in your heart for the Holy Spirit to gain entrance. Being broken doesn’t mean that you are beyond repair because with God all things are possible! I mean, He made the first man from the mud and breathed the breath of Life into him. God called up the cattle and other animals from the ground and caused the waters to teem with all kinds of living creatures, certainly, He can take a small crack in your heart and mend it to make you into a new creature in Christ!
Learning about Jesus and His love for you is not the end of your life but the beginning! How can I say this? Because this pitiful seventy or eighty years of life is nothing compared to eternity! Which is where you will spend the rest of Life with Him and with all of those who have given their lives and their hearts to Him! Don’t throw eternity away because of a small thing or some amount of money here on Earth! The streets of Heaven are paved with gold and the doors leading into the Temple in Heaven are made out of 12 ft. tall pearls! What can wealth here give you that you can’t have in eternity? Absolutely nothing!
Make sure of your salvation simply because, after your last breath in this life, you won’t have a chance to change your mind or destination in eternity.
Until that day comes when you feel that there is something missing and you can’t put a finger on what it might be. Sometimes this feeling hits us when we are teens or young adults and we try to fill that space with many things. Sometimes we try to fill it with sex or drugs, other times we try drinking, but eventually (if we survive all of the experimenting) we begin to look for something or someone meaningful to fill that void.
Sorrow? Fear? Anger? Loneliness? Is it something else which controls your days and nights? Alcohol or drugs or maybe sex? The problem is that most of these are what we try to fill up on when we find that there is an empty place inside, but we don’t know what to put there. It isn’t a what….its Jesus. This picture shows the very essence of the joy that we can feel because our Savior gave Himself for us so that we can know Him from this moment into eternity…if we will accept Him.
We have not been saved through Jesus’ sacrifice to keep that salvation to ourselves! While it is true that our view on salvation, sin, and eternity are views which aren’t held by much of the world today, God loves them regardless and He wants them to come to know Jesus for their salvation. It is true that, in the view of the world, we are narrow-minded and hypocritical in our lives it must be realized that only one Person was ever able to live a perfect, sinless life!
Why do we disagree with each other so vehemently? It seems that it doesn’t matter what religion or race or political party you belong to at the time, our differences of opinion and culture divide us so much that we can’t seem to find any common ground to work on!
The Exodus is their liberation from bondage as slaves in Egypt for over four hundred years. It is not unlike our own lives in that we were slaves to our life of sin and rebellion toward God. Now, for some of us this rebellion wasn’t an active rebellion and we may not have known that what we were doing was sinful in the sight of God. Why do I say it that way? Because many of us asked Jesus to become our Savior at an early age, say 8 or 12 years. I barely knew what the word “sin” meant and honestly I didn’t think that my life could’ve been classified as sinful, at that time.
Many of us actually don’t! Even if we are Christians and we are actually living our lives like we are supposed to, we just don’t speak up. Why is that? Are we afraid that we will be looked at as kooks? Jesus told His disciples to go and tell the gospel message to all of creation and they did! So…why can’t we?
Besides, if you have ever read the book of Job or heard a sermon from it, then you know that Satan has to get permission to do the things which he does, especially if it may harm Christians or Israel! The One Who is in Control and Who watches everything unfold in its time, is God. Sometimes bad things do happen to good people, but not without God’s permission. He knows that occasionally something has to happen if it will bring about a greater good in His Kingdom. It may cause pain for now, but in eternity the pain is taken away.
