Especially His: February 2016

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Why God Is NOT Enough!

[Jesus teaching] "'Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

"'And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.

"Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?'

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.'" John 14:1-7

Believing in God or a god has always seemed wise - like a spiritual insurance policy. Even the most immoral, crass and greedy believe in some kind of "higher power".

From the beginning, Adam and Eve BELIEVED in God. They SAW Him every day! Yet, they did not love Him enough to obey His simple prohibition.

The entire Old Testament is witness of the most gross and selfish of sinful behaviours. And most of those we read about in the Old Testament BELIEVED in God, too.

The Problem?

What WAS the problem? God loved His creation so much. He longed to walk daily together with each individual. To share thoughts and feelings and observations...to fellowship. (He still does!)

He gave the Ten Commandments, and elaborated them for the nit-pickers, to try and save arguments, heartache, suffering and sorrow.

Consistently, men and women wanted to do what was best in their own eyes. God did not want us to be robots, He wanted us to WANT Him, so He gave us the right to choose our own way. And so a great canyon grew between God and men -- dug out by sinful choices.

Solutions of Men

But men longed to be close to God...to have God on their side...to be "safe". So they started building bridges to get across this canyon to God. They built churches and "religiously" went there often to impress God with how dedicated they were.

They gave money to God to demonstrate to Him their generosity. They wrote stories and songs and made the commandments and laws into more of a game or a test to complete so they could win Sunday school medal to prove to others their holiness and to win favour with God.

They identified sin in others and tortured or killed them, imagining evil behind every shadow to make obvious to God they meant business in His name.

They even made a business out of God, selling His favours or selling books, coffee mugs and other trinkets designed around His neat-o sayings, like the pretty ones in Psalms and Ecclesiastes!

They gave God new names and new identities, creating liturgy and rituals and rules, smells, bells, sacrifices, etc. They killed one another over the gods they chose and blamed God for their motivation to kill.

Some even established anti-God groups that worshipped the enemy and declared God dead, absent always and gone forever. They ate frogs and boiled eye of newt and drank blood and killed cats and babies in the names of their anti-gods.

God wept.

Then He dried His eyes and made a plan for a new and living way for us to come to Him. It was His "Plan-J" conceived in Genesis 3, hidden in God's curses.

You see God HATES sin. He HATES looking on sin. And there is a price that He demands is paid for our sin -- if we are to have fellowship with Him. This is to be justified (clean) from all sin. And this takes a living sacrifice to pay for sin.

To bridge the canyon between Him and us, God knew it would take an extraordinary act of purity. And this would hurt Him so much it is impossible for us to imagine -- and that was Jesus.

Jesus, you see, is God's only Son, and it is Jesus that makes our relationship with God so VERY different from people who pride themselves on believing in God.

Believing in God is NOT Enough!

I read a news article recently about a woman who was teaching in a Bible-based Christian university who decided to wear a special head scarf of another religion and push the boundaries. She insisted we all worship the same God, which for all the controversy, IS true (Genesis 15-16). There IS no other God, but the Almighty!

Anyone can believe in God - the REAL God. But it is only by our own choice that we accept the one and only way God has created for us to have a RELATIONSHIP with Him and that frees us from the sin debt we each owe to Him.

That is why we HAVE Easter.

We take a day (some take the 40 days of Lent) to remind ourselves and celebrate once a year. Those of us who have accepted this full, perfect and complete payment for our sin; know Jesus died on the cross as that payment.

And THIS and this ALONE is what IS different for those who are Christians...for those who are saved to eternal life.

Intro Statement of Faith

Why "Especially His"? It comes from a closing statement in the WeakDay Devotions that I have been writing nearly every morning since 1999. Each day I close with this:

"Take care with love, especially His"

Although it is shared with many others around the world now, it seems each day's entry is written specifically for me and for what I am experiencing because I am, as the closing says, "especially His".

Over my lifetime I have been writing and teaching Bible-based studies and wanted a way for these teachings to reach a wider audience -- and hopefully be my legacy to a future generation. We all benefit from fellowship and good teaching and motivation that comes through prayer and reading our Bibles!

On this site you will find a variety of Bible-based and Christ-focused materials. My prayer is that they will help you grow and help you as you help others grow.

Modern-day Evangelism

Something amazing I learned as a young follower of Jesus Christ was that most of the efforts of modern day evangelism have little lasting effect, other than exposing an increasing number of people to God's Word. And as it says in Isaiah 55:11:

"So Shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it."

Yet, many are not ready, have hard hearts, are surrounded by influencing family or peers and they slink away into the warmth and darkness of unexpected despair.

We Need Ways

I do not minimise the value of canned methods or fancy printed tracts or little gimmicks like colourful beads strung on a leather bracelet or origami-folded coloured cards. We all need to have a way to share our faith in a way we are comfortable using.

I myself, was brought to the Cross through a tract called "Peace With God" published by the Billy Grahame Evangelistic Organisation, and I have trained in most of the methodologies for sharing my faith with another. I even wrote one that focuses on how Jesus evangelised and is based on the four Gospels.

But while being discipled under a wonderful Navigator couple (Don and Elaine Lanier) I also learned a statistic that makes so much sense. It goes like this:

"If each one of us, won one person per year to Christ, and we spent that one year discipling them in the basics, every person in the world would hear the Gospel message of Salvation in just thirty-three years."

Earmarked from the Beginning

Our lives are drawn to deciding to or not to follow Jesus from the moment we are conceived. This journey is as unique as our DNA (yes I do know about identical twins).

The journey after we come to understand the grace of the Father is furthermore unique until we die and begin eternity with our heavenly Father.

Statement of Faith

There is more to come, but want you to know just the core basics of my beliefs.

1. I believe God made man in His image and loves him and desires fellowship with him (Genesis 1:26-27, I John 4:10, John 3:16).

2. I believe there is no other way to Eternal Salvation than through knowing I am helpless against my sin nature and choice of sin. (Romans 5:6-8; 6:23).

3. There is nothing I can do to be acceptable in Heaven (Romans 3:20).

4. The only possibility is to accept the freely-offered gift of Jesus Christ paying the price for my sins by His death and resurrection. (I Corinthians 15:3-6; John 14:6).

5. I believe that the gift of Salvation is just that a gift and it is a gift by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8-9) and because this is a gift of grace, there is nothing I can do to make God love me more than He does once I accepted His salvation and there is nothing I can do to make God love me less.

6. That my salvation is not transitory according to my behaviour and that He holds me firmly in the palm of His hand (John 10:29).

7. That from the moment of Salvation, my life is a personal journey of growth that He has designed just for me (Psalm 139).

8. That the Bible is His Word to help me grow daily. II Timothy 3:16. (The translation I use for all quotes, unless otherwise specified, is The New American Standard Bible, ©The Lockman Foundation.)