The idea of asking someone, that you don’t know, to describe a smell or the taste of their favorite food or drink is something that crosses our minds sometimes. But…how would you describe such a personal thing such as a smell or a taste?
It would be similar to attempting to describe a color or love to someone who has never had sight or who has never had the experience of love. Impossible would be an apt description of the attempt. The description of warm feelings or trying to describe a color, even to someone who can see, is very difficult. When you don’t have a reference to build on or they don’t have a way to visualize what you are describing, the act of description becomes futile.
Many of our descriptions of the love of God are that way as well. His love is so deep and encompassing until we don’t have a reference to compare it to. The only human comparison would possibly be the love of a parent toward their child when they are born. This little person is a part of you and your wife/husband and just after they’re born you love them deeply beyond words. How does that happen? You know that they have been growing in the womb for the past few months and until they are born, you have never seen them until that day. Yet, the feelings that you have for them when they are born are indescribable to anyone except yourself and your mate.
The love that God has for each of us is similar to that but His love goes deeper. All the way to the molecular level. Why? Because He knit your genetic structure together and activated your personality and gave you your eye color and all of the quirks that make you and I unique. So God knows you better than you do. He knows you better than your parents or anyone else. That is why He made the sacrifice that He did in order to bring each of us to salvation. He knew you and me before we were born and He knew where we would be born and who our parents would be. That’s what makes God’s love so fantastic and deep!
When you feel His touch in your life and it is drawing you toward being a born-again believer, don’t turn away from HIm. He loves you so much and even the slightest turn from Him would hurt Him and you don’t want to do that. He won’t take it out on you or cause you to hurt because of it because He is far more patient than we are. God’s love is so deep that I can’t give you any better description than I have given here. I pray that anyone reading this will take it seriously because He is coming for the church soon.
Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus! For those who wonder if this is enough, remember that Jesus said “It is finished” on the cross before He died. That statement means that nothing else needs to be done. Only believe and call on His name and you will be saved, just as the thief on the cross believed in Him. He didn’t have the chance to be baptized yet Jesus said that “Today you will be with me in Paradise”. No amount of witnessing or outward show of faith would be possible for the thief but his belief in Jesus was enough for his salvation.
That is all a believer needs today. Immersion in water doesn’t cleanse you of your sins, it is a witness to the world that you have believed in Jesus and identify with Him in His death, burial and resurrection by being baptized. His blood from the cross sanctified you and cleansed you of your sins. There is nothing that you can add to His sacrifice to make it more complete because He finished it on the cross. Once you believe in Him and ask Him to save you, God wipes your slate clean forever, it is up to you and your commitment to Jesus to try to follow in His footsteps until you go home to Him one day.
Being clean, like Na-man the Syrian, takes obedience from the moment you believe. In the story from the Bible, Na-man had leprosy and was seeking a cure. Elisha told him to dip himself in the Jordan seven times and he would be clean. He didn’t want to do it because the Jordan was muddy but his servant convinced him to do it and when he obeyed and came up after the seventh time…his leprosy was gone. That is what God requires of us today. Obey, believe and walk in Jesus’ steps and do it all by faith in Him.
That word causes more problems in people’s lives than any other. “But”, why do people try to put that word in a sentence referring to the Bible and what it says? Mostly its because they are trying to get around what it says. Either because it refers to a part of their lives that they don’t want to stop doing or it is a way of rationalizing something.
I’ve noticed that in TV shows and movies, the word “but” usually comes before something going wrong. Why do we go this way? God’s Word was given to it’s writers by His Holy Spirit so it is the Truth, yet many of us don’t want to listen to the wisdom contained within it. Our world would be so much better if people could follow even half of the wisdom God has given us in His Word.
Studying the Bible isn’t difficult or impossible if you have given your heart to Jesus. I’ve heard people say that it is hard to understand and it can be if you don’t have the Holy Spirit in your heart teaching you as you read it. Before I became a Christian, most of the Bible didn’t make sense to me. Yes, the stories of Creation and the Exodus from Egypt I could understand from watching the movie about the Ten Commandments but (there’s that word again), when I tried to read the Psalms or any of the prophetic books of the Old Testament it was hard to understand.
God has blessed me in the last fifteen years. I have served as a pastor of a small church and I’ve read through the Bible each year since 2011. I figured I had better know about what I was going to be preaching about. In my reading of His Word, He taught me more than I could learn from going to a school (which I couldn’t afford to do). This site is the only place I’m preaching from anymore, but I enjoy it because it is what God called me to do.
Turning away from God’s Word because it seems hard to understand is something a Christian shouldn’t do. You learn about God and what He likes and hates and how to get closer to Him. Through prayer and reading the Bible you will learn more about how we are supposed to live our lives every day. It is not a rule book or a book with a lot of do’s and don’ts. The Bible is really an instruction book about living as a Christian, especially the New Testament. Every prophecy that was written in the Old Testament is or will be fulfilled in the New Testament. It is likely that we will see the return of Jesus in our lifetime, so I urge you to give your heart to Jesus soon.
The Living Message of Christ 