The Choice is Yours: A message for believers and nonbelievers alike

This week I have been examining my life and my own salvation, and coming to the terms that what the Bible says is not easy sometimes, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit we are able to bear the task of obeying the commandments.  In Luke 7 Jesus gives a parable to Peter and makes a comment to the woman who poured oil on his feet:

⁴⁰ And Jesus answered and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
So he said, “Teacher, say it.”
⁴¹ “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”
⁴³ Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”
And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.” ⁴⁴ Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. ⁴⁵ You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. ⁴⁷ Therefore I say to you, her sins,which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”
⁴⁸ Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
⁴⁹ And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
⁵⁰ Then He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

After hearing a sermon on the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, I had to seriously ask myself am I truly saved, or am I just going through the motions.  Am I like wheat or am I like a tare that is going to be burned in the fire?  I had to seriously seek God in this matter because how much I love Jesus I don’t want to be cast into the fire, and have Him tell me He never knew me.  I had questions like do I really have a relationship with Jesus or am I like a tare?  This time around reading the Gospels – I started to notice the parables even more and trying to find the hidden messages.  Sometimes I think Jesus is trying to say something and give me a rhema Word, and it turns out to be something totally different than what everyone else thinks.  Before I read the passage about the woman in Luke, I thought that if I have enough faith that I know my God and He knows me, then that should be alone well enough to justify my concerns of salvation.  I prayed to receive Rhema from the Word regarding this issue about salvation, and I came up with Luke 7:50.  So then I realized that God had answered my prayer and that He does talk to me and that I do hear His voice.

The other part of the sermon I heard it talked about if we as Christians, or believers, once being sure of our salvation do not reach out to nonbelievers, or wicked, or other sinners, then their blood will be on our hands.  I heard another preacher say this as well which lead me to this passage in Ezekiel 3:

¹⁶ Now it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ¹⁷“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me: ¹⁸ When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, that same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. ¹⁹ Yet, if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul. 
²⁰ “Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you did not give him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. ²¹ Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man that the righteous should not sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; also you will have delivered your soul.”

 

I want to break this apart a little bit – the first part the LORD is talking about the wicked – He has told the wicked (meaning anyone that does not believe in the LORD GOD) that when He tells them that they will die for their wickedness, and the watchman who is Ezekiel, but also represents believers in the body of Christ, to save his life, that person will die in their iniquity, but God will require their blood at our hands, and our souls will be paying the price for that, but if we do tell them and they do not turn from their wicked ways, we will not be held responsible for that.

Now here’s the part that gets me – the same goes true for a righteous man, or other Christians.  So if a righteous man is still sinning, and we don’t warn him we will be held responsible for that.  It is a very heavy call asking a righteous man not to sin especially when you look at the 613 commandments in the Law.  That seems like a burden, but the Bible says, it is not burdensome or heavy to bear, if you have the Holy Spirit in 1 John 5.  But doesn’t the New Testament say that there is no righteous not even one?  And Jesus said that if our righteousness does not exceed those of the scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  And Jesus also said that He did not come for the righteous, because the sick are in need of a Physician, not those that are well.

So what are the characteristics of the kingdom of heaven?  What do we really need?  The Bible says it best: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.  Love covers a multitude of sins.  Is this love based on emotion?  Or is it something else?

For that we need to go to 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7:

⁴ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Amplified says:

⁴Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.

⁵It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].

⁶It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.

⁷Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].

Try to replace love with your name and does that describe you?

Questions to answer yes to:

Do you endure long with screaming kids or heavy traffic jams and are patient and kind to your kids?

Questions to answer no to:

Do you ever want that dress, those shoes, that house, that car?  Do you brag about how many weights you lifted?  Do you think you are better than everyone else?

Do you act arrogantly or rudely?  Some people think being assertive is a form of arrogance.  Do you act unbecomingly or make inappropriately making immature comments?  I guess Frank Sinatra was not right, I like it My Way, is not the way we are supposed to think.  This can even happen in church – do you not like what the Pastor is preaching, what day the church is on, the music that they play, what time of day it is?  Do you get upset over little things, or do you worry a lot or hold grudges?  Would you ever want to sue anyone – even if they totalled your car and it was their fault?

Most of us can be on the right track with this one – Do we rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness or do we rejoice when righteousness and truth prevail?

Do we bear up under anything, and I mean anything that comes?

And the hardest one for most people in Bible prophecy – Do we believe the best of every person?  Anne Frank said in her diary, that she believed that deep down inside people are basically good at heart.  Can we say that for even the terrorists?

 

Are our hopes fadeless and do we endure everything and I mean everything without weakening?

 

So when we look at love God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself – do we have this depth of love?  We all need the LORD’s Mercy to cover us in this area.

 

One thing I want to say about if we don’t tell the wicked “You shall surely die” – this stems from the Adam and Eve story in the Bible – In the Bible it said in Genesis that God told them that if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will surely die, and the serpent, that is Satan told Eve, surely you will not die, but you will be like God knowing good and evil.  This is the same trap we have had from the beginning of time.  People didn’t think they would die from not obeying God, but the truth is that we do die, but our death is not what we think.  Adam and Eve went from having a perfect life to seeding what are news headlines in today’s world.  Do we want to change the course of the path that we are on, whether believer or non-believer?  Do we want to be caught up in a blackhole with no return, where the pain there will be pain so immense that you can not bear it?  Or do we want to have peace of mind, security, peace, joy, knowing that when you die you can actually rest in peace.

I’ve been seeing this posting about Steve Jobs, that came as a joke, that the angels in heaven were welcoming Jobs when he came because God needed an app.   Was he really living by the fruits of the spirit, did he attain salvation?  The only fruit we know of is the Apple, and that what some say was the fruit that was not to be eaten in the Garden of Eden.   After a man knows he is going to die, you would think that he got his heart right with God.  We can judge, but only God knows.

Do you know the LORD as your personal Savior?  Have you asked Him into your heart?  Do you want to have your life turn around and be filled with love?  Time is now.  The Choice is Yours.  Vote now – Jesus or the devil?  Heaven or Hell?  Eternal Life or Eternal Death?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why am I in grief and pained with these emotions?

I have been struggling a lot with some hurtful things that people said and the fact that some loved ones are pulling further away from God.  I am not going to go in talk about what happened, but when I was looking back at the way I have been feeling lately – so sad and grieved and in a depth of emotional pain I found something again in the Bible when I was not even looking for this verse…

Hebrews 12:11 “For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems grievous and painful; but afterwards it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it [a harvest of fruit which consists in righteousness–in conformity to God’s will in purpose, thought, and action, resulting in right living and right standing with God]. “

It’s actually pretty funny that God brought this verse to me at a time when I didn’t understand what was going on and why I was feeling this way.  At first in previous posts I talked about the physical discipline, but there is also an emotional discipline that comes into focus.  God can bring us into a time of pain and grief, and you don’t understand why and what is happening to you.  This pain was totally unrelated to the bipolar disorder, but it had more to do with my own relationship with God and areas I needed to work on.  So I have been really sad and even at times wanting to turn away from God because the deeper I got the more pain I felt.  Now I realized that God has been disciplining me- not punishing me, but He has been making me His disciple through letting me walk through the walls of forgiveness and learning to reach out to Him.  I went to the Word today seeking Him and seeing if there could be just one verse that could just reach out and speak out to me that would be enough.  It was almost like if I could reach out and touch the hem of His garment then I would be healed.  I would experience the joy that I so needed.  I would be able to get out of these lies that satan has been feeding me and stop tormenting myself because I know the Truth lies in His Word.  But I had to be very careful because even satan can use God’s Word to twist it and make you feel bad about yourself.  I felt so wicked and so not close to God, but the Truth was that He was making me a true disciple by letting me go through this grief and pain so that I can learn how to be close to Him.  It is the only way.  God uses our pain and the deepness of our emotions to burn out anything that is not of Him so we can be pure like gold.

I realize that God is my potter and I am the clay.  With each circumstance, with each season, with each molding He is drawing us close to Him, and when we don’t see that we can be stuck in either a pity party or we may not have an understanding of why things are going on.  The Truth is that God really loves us and He wants to see us grow, and He doesn’t want to hurt us like I mentioned before.  It may seem like I am expressing the same things over and over again through my posts, but it is a lesson that I am trying to learn this time in my life.

I don’t know about you, but I can be a very hard learner when it comes to the things of God.  God may have to show me things a million times over to see that this is what He meant.  I can be doing very good, enjoying life, making progress, and then all of a sudden I realize that I haven’t been doing what God wanted me to do.  Instead of going through a cycle of repenting and asking for forgiveness and trying to be better next time, I go into this cycle of really beating myself up about it, and condemning myself because I push myself away from God and closer to the lies of satan.  This is what my therapist calls self-sabotage, but it isn’t my plan or purpose to do that, it isn’t even God’s plan or purpose to do that, but it is satan’s purpose to do that with all the distractions, and poisonous darts that he puts in your way that causes you to detract from the good that you are doing.  It causes you to really know God and realize eventually, that “Aha!” this is what He is doing.  It also takes a little bit of knowing who you are and exactly how you will react to a situation.  It also takes a little bit of knowing who exactly satan is in this world and what his strategies are.

What I can’t emphasize enough is that God uses every pain or bad situation and turns it around for good.  It is so we will have fruit and bear character that would bring fruit into our lives.  Some people are mistaken in thinking that when we receive the Holy Spirit and become a Christian or become converted then all of a sudden “BAM!” everything turns around and just falls into place.  Well, I”m sorry that’s just not the way life works.  We have to go through a lot of struggles in life and whether we are Christian and Holy Spirit filled or not we are still going to have problems and pain.  We are not going to be happy and joyful a 100% of the time.  We are not going to be free of making mistakes and having failures because life is all about that.  Life is all about making mistakes and learning through them and finding God through this process.  Some people will start to have a peace that they have not experienced before and some people will be free of addicitions, but we have to remember that this is all a process, and you can only focus on one day at a time.

Sometimes Christians who are heavily in the Word of God and spending all their time studying the Bible don’t take the time to enjoy the simple things in life.  God wanted us to enjoy the simple things in life and that’s why He spoke in Parables and stories so that simple people could take away the Truth in a form in which was applicable in life.  God can speak to you in so many ways and in so many situations.  He doesn’t have to use just the Bible or His Word to speak to us because that is just one manifestation of the Living Word of God.  He is multifacted.  God can speak to us using the beautiful things in creation.  God can speak to us while we are doing things we enjoy like our hobbies.  Some people have pets and God can speak through pets and children.

What we have to do is to find a way in which we can experience God’s love and still experience life – after all He wants us to have “life and have life more abundantly” and the only way to do that is to live your life.  If you become obsessed with God and you don’t have the right focus it can be a detriment to you without you even realizing it because if your thoughts and life are not planted on good soil they will not be nourished and produce good fruit.  So you can be super obsessed with God and the Bible, but you are not producing fruit in your life by taking the time and living out your life and fulfilling the destiny God has in purpose for you.

I believe in Heaven it is just going to be like one big party all the time.  But Heaven is not just one place in the sky that you can only see after you die.  God’s purpose is to see His Kingdom and Heaven here on earth and the one way we do that is by letting Heaven live in our hearts.

It is important to set goals and reach out to achieve those goals.   It is important to take out the time to go and “smell the roses”.  It is important to have just some “me” time when you can be by yourself and just take in the things in and let all the tensions and stresses of life go.  If you can’t go out and give someone a hug today – then find something to enjoy.  I guess my problem is that I have been so focused on my problems that I didn’t take out any time for myself and focus on the little things in life.  God is bigger than my problem.