Category: Christian Life

Much of our lives we have been presented with religion.  We have seen the Pope on tv, or Billy Graham, and many other tele-evangelists.  Or we have friends, family, or co-workers, or even strangers who have talked, presented, or even brow beat us with God and our need for Him.  Loads of rules and regulations, and empty promises of  a “bed of roses” happy life that has gotten many of us turned off God.  And yet the question of the reality of God continues to go unanswered in many of our hearts. Does God exist, and does He really want to know me?

And many of us have tried to answer that question.  We have spent time in church, or read bibles and tried to live up to the standards we see portrayed in the bibles, and talked about be Christians.  We hear about the “pious” life we are to live, and don’t often see the people who are declaring this “religion” living up to it.  Or they are living hastily propped up “pious” lives that don’t bear any close scrutiny.  Their lives resemble a hastily put together Hollywood set, where if you look beyond the surface what you see is not what you get.  Jesus Himself reserved the harshest words in scripture for these people.  He called them “whitewashed tombs”, clean and presentable on the surface and full of death and poison on the inside.

And yet is this what we were to be living?  Paul says “God forbid”. It was not the life God intended for us at all.  I have been reading my bible in a new version as of late, and reading the scriptures worded a little differently has given me new insight, and is helping me grow in my understanding of God and what He truly intended for us.  I have said many times that God intended us for relationship, not a religion.  He intended us for a connection of hearts, not an outward expression of rules and regulations that promote us before men.

Our problem is that we have tried to fulfill what God wants on our own, in our own strength.  And it has caused us to become discouraged and very disenchanted with our creator.  We keep trying to “become” what we think we should be, and when we consistently fail we eventually give up.  We cannot get into a relationship with God by following rules and regulations.   And yet we struggle and struggle.  Paul said “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”. People have been having this struggle for centuries.  It is not a new struggle.  Our problem is not that we sin.  Watchmen Nee stated it best when he said “We are not sinners because we sin, We sin because we are sinners.” It is our basic nature that is the problem.  And it requires an act of God to change it.

This is where I  come to the scripture I was reading.  Reading Matthew 3:11 in the Message version I read this “The main character in this drama(being Jesus)will ignite the kingdom life within you… changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.” It is God’s “Kingdom life” that changes us.  All we have to do is respond.  No more struggling to achieve some standard of living.  No more searching ourselves for wrong behavior. God will put everything in our lives in proper order.  We simply take His hand, follow His lead and obey His direction.  We simply do what Jesus said “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Simply responding to God, in our daily, intimate relationship, following His lead and learning the “unforced rhythms of grace”.  It definitely takes a lot of pressure off.  Our job is not to attain right standing with God by our actions.  That is provided by Jesus alone.  Our job is to simply to get to know Him who loves us without restraint or reservation, and then to allow Him to change and direct our lives.  Not an easy task, but one without pressure or struggle.  We simply get to love Him who first loved us and keep in step with Him.

Every person born has a destiny.  Each of us was created with a purpose.  And no one is ever born a mistake.  We are all born planned, and purposed by God, and each of us was born, as the bible says, “for such a time as this.”

We are born in the time, location, family, and circumstance we were chosen for.  God has personally designed us for the season in which we live and no other.  The whole concept of bing born “in the wrong century” is completely wrong.  We were born for this time and for this season.  Unfortunately we tend to screw things up.  We have chosen to go our own way, and do what we “feel” is right for us, and we have totally screwed up our world, our families, and our lives.  God never intended us to live this way.  But our choices to live our way have led us to it.

We were chosen and designed by God and planned from before the world was formed.  Scripture says “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. “  And He chose us for a purpose.  Tbhe bible also states “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”  Our chose is whether we live out our plans for our life, or discover and fulfil our destiny.

God designed each of us with a plan in mind.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”  And we can never reach our destiny unless we connect with God.  A friend of mine says it this way, “We all have a unique song to sing, and only we can sing it, and the greatest tragedy is for us to die and the world never hears our song.”  We each have a purpose, song, and no one else can live it out for us.  And our song was meant to be sung in this time.  And most of us carry our song to the grave never having sung it, or even learning what our song is.

In order for us to find out our destiny we have to come to know personally the one who created us and planned us.  Without that we can never know the reason why we are here.  Only as we come to know our creator will we come to know and fulfil our destiny.  There is no other way.  To put this in familiar terms, this is Christianity.  Coming to personally know our God and Savior, letting him touch our lives, find his purpose and live it out each and everyday.  Doing that with other fellow believers in a nutshell is Christianity.  Not the rules and regulations the church has spouted for generations.  We can never know, or achieve our destiny based on our merit.  Only by coming to know our designer, and following His direction for our lives can we ever truly “Be all we can be.”

This is the season that consumes our hearts and minds.  Thoughts of friends and family, big dinners and gifts, Christmas trees and stockings.  And among some people we remember the real reason for the season.  This the time we remember that Jesus came to earth and was born in a manger.  Born to demonstrate who God truly was.  Jesus stated in scripture “If you have seen Me, You have seen The Father.”  For to long people had seen God as distant, uninterested, uninvolved, and a strict judge and totalitarian.  The saw Him as do it My way, or fire and brimestone will rain down apon you.  And yet this is not at all who God is.

So Jesus came to dispel the rumors and to reveal the true nature of God.  And He demonstrated what I like to call  the L.A.F. Principle, which is the heart of God towards us simply stated in three points.

First is L.  L stands for love.  John 3:16, perhaps the most famous verse in scripture states  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And verse 17  follows  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”    God deeply loves us.  And does so unconditionally, and without reservation.  Our problem is we have been separated from His love by the things we have done wrong in our lives.  And only when we repent of our wrong doing and accept His forgiveness can we receive that love. 

Growing up I spent my whole life in church and never once experienced God’s love personally.  You see going to church will never make us acceptable to God, nor will any of the good deeds we do.  When I came to God on His terms, and surrendered my life to His control however, the experience of God’s love flooded my whole being and changed me forever.  The feeling is indescribable.  There are not words enough in any language to describe the immensity of God’s love, and there is no way to properly convey how awesome His love for me is.  And scripture states that “God is no respecter of persons” which means that with God there are no favorites.  God loves you in the exact way and with the exact intensity as He loves me.  All you have to do is come to Him on His terms and you can experience it for yourself.  After all, He is God.

Second is A. A stands for Acceptance.  God accepts us without condition.  He never asks us to measure up to any standard before He brings us into His family.  In fact scripture states that God opened the door for us to enter into His family before we were interested or willing for that matter.  “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”   The only thing God requires is that we believe in Him.   God has rolled out the welcome carpet for us and called us each personally by name, and all we have to do is accept His invitation. 

Third is F. F stands for Forgiveness.  God’s heart is for all of us to be included in His family.  Scripture states “God wills that all men be saved”.    Jesus came to earth to live among us and reveal God’s true heart towards us, and more importantly to pay our penalty for our sin, and provide the way for us to be included into His family.  Jesus then rose again from the dead to go and prepare a place for us and to show us that with Him we no longer have to fear death, as He will take us home with Him if we accept His invitation. 

The big thing that all this reveals is that there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor, and nothing we can do to pay our own way into His family.  We get there simply because God loves us that much and chose to invite each of us in.  The only thing we can say we did was to say yes to His invite.