Jesus made it clear that Heaven was exclusive- that not everyone who claimed to be a follower of Jesus would get into Heaven. I believe I have some insight as to why Jesus said what he said. Bear with me, I have a purpose I am trying to reach.
I believe very strongly that the point of Jesus's teaching on Heaven and hell was not to give us a picture of the nature of God. God longs to have relationship with each and every human being on planet earth. He longs for justice and mercy at the same time, two conflicting emotions that God cannot fully rectify in himself. Jesus didn't talk about the way to Heaven being narrow because God doesn't want everyone in Heaven- he talked this way so that his followers would have seriousness of purpose. You can "luckily" find your way away from Hell, simply because God likes you. However, you can't "accidentally" escape the fires of Hell. You must have done something- SOMETHING right. Of course there's always purgatory, and going to Heaven with no treasure at all. Only a few will go to Heaven rich, and those few will find everlasting joy in the life to come. Heaven is for those that live- abide- in relationship with God.
God as judge, will examine humanity one human at a time, and he will judge rightly based on the condition of each human's heart and how each human responded when God reached out to them. God is just. He cannot- and WILL NOT- allow any sin to go without consequence. Every decision we make has its consequences. Just because the blood of Jesus covers it doesn't mean that the consequences for that sin will be denied a place. Heaven is not for everyone. Everyone who lives authentic lives before God will find mercy on the day of judgment. Some will find a degree of mercy simply because God likes their attitude and those people passed the exams that God gave them. God reserves the right to be merciful TO WHOMEVER HE WANTS TO BE MERCIFUL TO. Some atheists are going to at least Purgatory simply because they passed their exams and God liked their heart attitude. They may be poor in Heaven, or they may just end up in purgatory- all depends on what they did with their lives and why they did what they did. There will be some people who claimed Jesus with their words but with their actions they denied him. These will be surprised that Jesus refuses to defend them because he finds their hearts too odious to be willing to claim them. DON'T ASSUME JUST BECAUSE YOU PRAYED A PRAYER THAT HEAVEN WILL BE OPEN TO YOU. Did you pass your tests? Did you do what is right in the eyes of your maker? Did you receive God's love when it came to you, and did you love the people God called you to love? These are important questions that demand an answer. God reserves the right to judge each human being rightly, each on their own sins and merits. He reserves the right to forgive some sins due to repentance , and hold others accountable because they just never understood how badly they screwed up. Heaven is God's home. He'll let people in that he likes and that are worthy. He'll send the borderline cases and the difficult ones to purgatory. The real riffraff and the ones who truly fucked up their lives and the lives around them will go to hell and will never escape. God is just.
Don't forget this. Jesus warned that God was an intense person that doesn't pussyfoot around when it comes to sin. God isn't into games. You can't score points with your maker by good deeds. You can't fail your exams and then expect to make up for this through sacrifice. God will test you- and you never know when a test is coming your way. When a test comes, however, it is important that you pass it. No one is going to pass your tests for you. God is watching your decisions, and you never know when an exam will come your way. Be ready to have a right heart attitude when your test comes. Be ready to love. And know this- God longs to be close to everyone. If you refuse his love when it comes, it will be remembered. God wants to be part of your life. If you don't let him in, there will be consequences...
Monday, November 28, 2016
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Go Out and Live Your Life
Before I get started, I want to post the following link to watch before you read this post. This video says it all.
Life was meant to be lived. Life wasn't meant to just avoid sin or just to exist long enough to die and go to Heaven. Eternity was meant to be an extension of your life, not a destination to be traveled to. I think a movie that best exemplifies what I'm talking about is "Stranger Than Fiction." If you haven't seen "Stranger Than Fiction," in it a man is just going through the motions in living his life, until one day he starts hearing a narrator, who is narrating his life- and this changes everything. He finds out he's going to die. How he comes to terms with his imminent death is really much of the point of the story. One memorable quote from the movie is "You could eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted." I think the point of that remark is that the quality of the pancakes versus the quality of the life that is being lived is a relevant comparison. You could live 100 years and just barely exist for most of them and it would be meaningless. As I write these words I am convicted of how I'm living my own life, but that does not make these words any less true. Make a decision today to not just exist and get by. Choose today to make the most of what your maker has given you. Go out and live your life.
Life was meant to be lived. Life wasn't meant to just avoid sin or just to exist long enough to die and go to Heaven. Eternity was meant to be an extension of your life, not a destination to be traveled to. I think a movie that best exemplifies what I'm talking about is "Stranger Than Fiction." If you haven't seen "Stranger Than Fiction," in it a man is just going through the motions in living his life, until one day he starts hearing a narrator, who is narrating his life- and this changes everything. He finds out he's going to die. How he comes to terms with his imminent death is really much of the point of the story. One memorable quote from the movie is "You could eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted." I think the point of that remark is that the quality of the pancakes versus the quality of the life that is being lived is a relevant comparison. You could live 100 years and just barely exist for most of them and it would be meaningless. As I write these words I am convicted of how I'm living my own life, but that does not make these words any less true. Make a decision today to not just exist and get by. Choose today to make the most of what your maker has given you. Go out and live your life.
Monday, January 18, 2016
It Belongs to You? Really?
I had this epiphany on my way home from work. Honestly, I had read about this particular idea in "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis, but truthfully this topic is not something that gets talked about in Christian circles as much as it should, and even when it IS talked about, I don't think the truth of it really sinks in. I'm not sure how deeply I get it yet, but... I think the truth of what I'm saying went a level deeper than it was before. This topic- the fact that everything belongs to God, including our time, our bodies, our money, and our relationships, requires elaboration.
I think as Christians we tend to give lip-service to this idea. We SAY that it all belongs to God, but... we don't really believe it. Take the subject of sexual sin. God says that all sexual activity outside the confines of marriage are forbidden. How do we respond? We say "It's our body. We may do as we please." Same thing with homosexual activity. Ultimately, everything from masturbating to porn to having sex with anyone you aren't married to (and homosexual marriages aren't acknowledged by God) falls outside of how sex was intended by God. How do we respond to this? It's OUR body, so we may do as we please. We do the same thing with our time, our money- pretty much anything we use and abuse that one could think of owning, we claim ownership over. However, our bodies and our time and money- who said that they were actually ours? Of course, to the secular mind we ARE a body, so it follows from such a perspective that our bodies belong to us. Truthfully, we could no more create a human being through working with dust than a pig could learn to fly. All body functions are in some sense understandable by science, however we are in no position to WILL things to work as they do. The miracle of life is beyond our control. Our bodies belong to God- they have from the beginning of time. We are borrowing them, as we ARE a soul, not a body. When we die, our body is reclaimed, and we continue on into new life, and we are given new bodies in a different realm. Our time on this earth also is not ours. Why do we think it is ours? Who told us that we own our time here on earth? I'm not sure where this idea came from. We think that by being given free will, that somehow the choices we make belong to us. This is an illusion. Please don't misunderstand me- I don't believe God to be a harsh taskmaster who doesn't want us to have any fun or that we would have no say in how our time is spent. From the beginning, it was God's heart that we would work with him in how the time we are borrowing from him is used. Nevertheless, we ARE borrowing time. Every day is on loan from our maker. We could die at any time- surely if God wanted to, he could have taken my life or yours at any moment He chooses. The illusion of owning my time would then end and I would be forced to meet my maker. Hopefully that day will be a pleasant one and not a painful one, as Heaven is a gift and not an obligation from God.
Here within this message is a plain notion of why God only takes people who live by faith. Part of living by faith is giving to God what actually already belongs to God. If you do what you believe to be right, but don't actually acknowledge that everything we have is on loan from the creator of all things, you are not living in relationship with God, and that is a dangerous place to live. Being good or nice on your terms means denying God his full ownership of your life, and God refuses to play second fiddle to you. He is either God as his rightful place in your life, or he isn't. This is a hard word- and I myself struggle with it, but it is true. Truthfully, only two beings own everything- God and Satan. Anything that isn't devoted to God belongs to Satan, as we have no more ability to own anything than an ant does to the anthill it has created- as you know, such a hill can be destroyed by us at any time. Everything either belongs to God, or Satan: you choose...
I think as Christians we tend to give lip-service to this idea. We SAY that it all belongs to God, but... we don't really believe it. Take the subject of sexual sin. God says that all sexual activity outside the confines of marriage are forbidden. How do we respond? We say "It's our body. We may do as we please." Same thing with homosexual activity. Ultimately, everything from masturbating to porn to having sex with anyone you aren't married to (and homosexual marriages aren't acknowledged by God) falls outside of how sex was intended by God. How do we respond to this? It's OUR body, so we may do as we please. We do the same thing with our time, our money- pretty much anything we use and abuse that one could think of owning, we claim ownership over. However, our bodies and our time and money- who said that they were actually ours? Of course, to the secular mind we ARE a body, so it follows from such a perspective that our bodies belong to us. Truthfully, we could no more create a human being through working with dust than a pig could learn to fly. All body functions are in some sense understandable by science, however we are in no position to WILL things to work as they do. The miracle of life is beyond our control. Our bodies belong to God- they have from the beginning of time. We are borrowing them, as we ARE a soul, not a body. When we die, our body is reclaimed, and we continue on into new life, and we are given new bodies in a different realm. Our time on this earth also is not ours. Why do we think it is ours? Who told us that we own our time here on earth? I'm not sure where this idea came from. We think that by being given free will, that somehow the choices we make belong to us. This is an illusion. Please don't misunderstand me- I don't believe God to be a harsh taskmaster who doesn't want us to have any fun or that we would have no say in how our time is spent. From the beginning, it was God's heart that we would work with him in how the time we are borrowing from him is used. Nevertheless, we ARE borrowing time. Every day is on loan from our maker. We could die at any time- surely if God wanted to, he could have taken my life or yours at any moment He chooses. The illusion of owning my time would then end and I would be forced to meet my maker. Hopefully that day will be a pleasant one and not a painful one, as Heaven is a gift and not an obligation from God.
Here within this message is a plain notion of why God only takes people who live by faith. Part of living by faith is giving to God what actually already belongs to God. If you do what you believe to be right, but don't actually acknowledge that everything we have is on loan from the creator of all things, you are not living in relationship with God, and that is a dangerous place to live. Being good or nice on your terms means denying God his full ownership of your life, and God refuses to play second fiddle to you. He is either God as his rightful place in your life, or he isn't. This is a hard word- and I myself struggle with it, but it is true. Truthfully, only two beings own everything- God and Satan. Anything that isn't devoted to God belongs to Satan, as we have no more ability to own anything than an ant does to the anthill it has created- as you know, such a hill can be destroyed by us at any time. Everything either belongs to God, or Satan: you choose...
Saturday, January 16, 2016
The Nature of Faith In God
Modern conversation about faith often revolves around believing in the existence of God. However, believing in God is actually of little value in the kingdom by itself- to understand this, let's talk a bit about some major players in the Old Testament. It is where our journey begins.
Here's the thing. When God came to Abraham, he didn't say "Believe in me because I exist." He asked Abraham to believe that he would have a son, even though his wife and himself were quite along in years and having a kid at that point seemed to require a miracle. This is a pattern that we see consistently in the Bible. God asks his people to believe things that are borderline insane or perhaps even completely insane. We could mention Noah, who believed a major flood was coming and that he should build a boat to house his family and animals to preserve the lives that got on the boat. We could mention Joseph, who believed that God was going to have him be a ruler over his brothers and father- after which he was sold into slavery, and later thrown into prison. Then we could speak of David, who was anointed king of Israel, only to find himself hiding in the wilderness being chased around by a megalomaniac. In these stories, God says something fantastic and unbelievable, and really only the listener believes that what God is saying is true. Everyone else viewed it as rubbish. This is foundational in the kingdom. Anyone with a big purpose in the kingdom has to go through this. If you don't believe God is asking you to believe anything magnificent and seemingly crazy, then I would question whether you are a major player in the kingdom. The major players all have dreams that can only be accomplished by faith in the one who gave the dream. I think it takes more faith to believe God for a modern day miracle than to believe Jesus rose from the dead, something many modern Christians believe and is quite common. God wants you to believe in your own miracle- that vision God is giving you for your own life that you cannot accomplish on your own.
This is the truth right here. God is looking for people who will believe what God tells them and trust God implicitly. If you hear God say something to you that sounds too good to be true, it's only because by trusting God you will see the miracle God gave you come to pass. The bigger and more meaningful the vision, the greater the miracle inside you that needs to happen before the miracle around you can come to pass. David was just a shepherd when God had Samuel anoint him as king. It's because David believed that he was able to walk with God through all the trials between David and his becoming the next king of Israel. That is what true faith looks like- go and do likewise.
Here's the thing. When God came to Abraham, he didn't say "Believe in me because I exist." He asked Abraham to believe that he would have a son, even though his wife and himself were quite along in years and having a kid at that point seemed to require a miracle. This is a pattern that we see consistently in the Bible. God asks his people to believe things that are borderline insane or perhaps even completely insane. We could mention Noah, who believed a major flood was coming and that he should build a boat to house his family and animals to preserve the lives that got on the boat. We could mention Joseph, who believed that God was going to have him be a ruler over his brothers and father- after which he was sold into slavery, and later thrown into prison. Then we could speak of David, who was anointed king of Israel, only to find himself hiding in the wilderness being chased around by a megalomaniac. In these stories, God says something fantastic and unbelievable, and really only the listener believes that what God is saying is true. Everyone else viewed it as rubbish. This is foundational in the kingdom. Anyone with a big purpose in the kingdom has to go through this. If you don't believe God is asking you to believe anything magnificent and seemingly crazy, then I would question whether you are a major player in the kingdom. The major players all have dreams that can only be accomplished by faith in the one who gave the dream. I think it takes more faith to believe God for a modern day miracle than to believe Jesus rose from the dead, something many modern Christians believe and is quite common. God wants you to believe in your own miracle- that vision God is giving you for your own life that you cannot accomplish on your own.
This is the truth right here. God is looking for people who will believe what God tells them and trust God implicitly. If you hear God say something to you that sounds too good to be true, it's only because by trusting God you will see the miracle God gave you come to pass. The bigger and more meaningful the vision, the greater the miracle inside you that needs to happen before the miracle around you can come to pass. David was just a shepherd when God had Samuel anoint him as king. It's because David believed that he was able to walk with God through all the trials between David and his becoming the next king of Israel. That is what true faith looks like- go and do likewise.
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