I want to share some things with you that I have
found to be
truly awesome
The
first thing, I guess, is that I personally have come to know that
there is really no greater joy in life, than to have
the Lord God as the object of all your desire; to have a will in your heart that is totally
given to Him. There is no feeling of joy or happiness greater
than this. The Bible tells me this is so, and in my life's
experience I have come to know it is true. I hope you can
know this for yourself too, because when this Love has touched your
life there isn't much that can shake you and nothing can take it
away from you. The problem is, to have a will in your heart
given completely to God isn't something that we
can do . The Bible says that true faith and believing is the gift of God, given to us solely
on the basis of His mercy. When we realize our inability to
please Him and to do the right thing, and acknowledge that there
is no way we can be worthy of Him, then we can begin to know the
way He has provided for us.
God
came to us in the person of His son Jesus Christ for the sole
purpose of enduring the wrath of God that is hanging over our heads because of our sins. Jesus
stood before God the Father after taking all the sins of everyone
who would believe in Him upon Himself. As He stood there,
God the Father judged Him, found Him guilty with all of our sins,
and punished Him, by pouring out His wrath upon Him -- punishing
Him for our sins. Because He was judged in our place,
God promises that all who come to Him believing
in Jesus and trusting in His work, will be received by
God and never have to be judged (because Jesus was judged in their place already).
Anyone who is trusting in their own work for salvation,
or who could care less about who Jesus is and what He did, will
have to stand alone and be judged by God, on Judgment Day.
They will have to bear their own sins and be judged, and everyone
who is judged, will be found guilty
and
will have to bear the wrath of God's righteous indignation upon
themselves. Since it is difficult for our minds to comprehend
how terrible this will be, God uses the picture of being burned
with fire eternally to help us understand. Here is another
way to look at it:
God
is the source of all that is good . Everything good that we experience is
from Him. In this life we experience good things and bad things,
but God did not create things to be this way. He originally
created everything good. In the Garden of Eden there was
no death, no sorrow, no pain. God created man as the crown
of His creation and gave the earth to man. When man turned
his back on God's love for him and sinned against Him he, in effect,
separated himself from God, and all that belonged to him was also
separated from God. Man and the earth became separated from
God and His goodness. When you don't have goodness what
do you have? When you don't have light what do you have?
Darkness, right? So when goodness is absent you have badness,
or in other words, evil. This is why we now experience good
and evil in this world. It is only because God is
so perfectly good and kind and loving, that he did not allow us
to be completely separated from Him in the beginning. He
still blesses us with good things in this world, but since the
world has been separated from Him it is now under a curse --there
is death, and pain, and sorrow; everything wears out and fades
away, nothing lasts, etc. And in us there is also a curse
--we have a nature that is naturally sinful. We are more
inclined to do evil than good. And we have a natural
tendency to rebel and disbelieve in the God that created us and
loved us, than we are to love Him back. Because of this,
we deserve God's hatred in return, not His love; we deserve His
wrath and because God is perfect in every way, this means that
He is perfectly just; and justice demands that crime (or sin)
be punished. It is not right for wrongdoing to go unpunished.
God, in His perfect righteousness must punish sin. In fact, because
He is so perfectly good He has a perfect hatred for what is evil.
This may be hard for us to understand because we don't have a
perfect hatred for evil, we actually enjoy much of it, that is
why we sin. But it is a good thing to hate what is bad,
isn't it? And God is perfectly good, so He has a perfect hatred
for what is evil. The unfortunate truth is that we, in fact,
by nature, are evil. And mankind became this way by separating
ourselves from Him and in our fallen nature are continually trying
to separate ourselves further and further from Him by seeking
to gratify our sinful desires. For this, the Lord will give
us what we want. A place completely separated from Him,
a place without Him and without goodness; where no goodness will
exist; where only the wrath of God will be felt -- for an eternity.
A place the Lord refers to as Hell, a place we need to be saved
from.
Wonderfully,
God
has provided a way of escape . Because He Himself is Love, He
has made a way for us to be saved from the certain consequence
of eternal damnation. As I mentioned before, that way is
through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who endured the wrath
of God so that all who believe in Him would not have to.
And the Lord promises that all who come to God trusting in Jesus'
work for their salvation will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,
who is God's very presence. The Lord refers to His Holy Spirit as the "deposit"
upon our soul, which is the guarantee that He will bring us to
be with Him in Heaven. And this Spirit of God dwelling within us will give us a
will and a desire to want to love God and do His will. The person who has the Holy Spirit seeks to please God,
not because they are trying to get to Heaven, but because they
know they are going to Heaven, and they want to thank God for
this truly awesome gift which they did not deserve. They
know they are saved, simply because they believe, and because
they see in their heart that they have a will that wants to please
God (this is one evidence of the Holy Spirit within them).
They realize that God has had mercy upon them and has opened their
eyes to see and understand their need for Jesus and that God has
saved them, by giving them the gift of faith. In our sinful
nature we are not interested it truth, or God. God the Father
draws us to Jesus Christ by putting these desires into our hearts.
It is sometimes difficult to understand how God saves us, but
one thing we can understand more easily, is our need to be saved. When we throw ourselves at
His mercy, recognizing our inability to save ourselves, He promises
to save us -- and as we walk with Him, He promises to lead us
into understanding, and help us realize more and more the work
He has done, and the work He continues to do in us. All
glory and praise and honor be to Him.
In
the light of all this information, a person might ask, "How Do I Come To God?"
All
statements made here can be supported with the
Bible. Please feel free to request verses which pertain to specific
statements made. If you should have questions or comments about
what is said or have need for additional verses, you can e-mail
them by Clicking Here
(this
web site is continually under construction as new Bible studies
are added. It is my hope that it
will also serve as a place for dialogue for those
sincerely seeking Truth and understanding. Make your comments by Clicking Here
Grace
be with you and Love from the one Savior Jesus Christ.
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