Make the choice, come home to God

By DAVID BACON

Well, to those of you who missed the first fewcolumns I wrote, in order to get you to where we now find ourselves, I’ve provided a little catch-up recap.

1.) The fact that we undeniably accept that tomorrow will always come leads us to the inescapable conclusion that we live in eternity whether we want to acknowledge that fact or not.

2.) Relying on our belief in tomorrows, if we decide to to decide how we will live our lives tomorrow, that actually becomes a decision we have made to not decide the course of our lives. Even though tomorrow will always come, we may not be there to greet it. In other words, we have only the days we have been given while we are on this earth to decide how we will live our lives.

3.) What is true will always be true. If we elect to believe that whatever we want to be true is true, that doesn’t make it true. Just because we don’t want to learn the true facts doesn’t mean that these true facts aren’t right there staring us in the face while we are alive on this earth. What things are true were and always have been true long before we were born. These truths remain true during our lifetimes and these same truths will still be eternally true long after we have set sail from this planet.

If we decide to never get to know what these real truths are during our lifetimes, well, that’s a decision we have made and like all decisions, this decision has a consequence.

The human response to being forced to make an educated decision when we don’t want to make an effort to become educated is always to delay making any decision at all. See # 2 above. Our ordinary human takeaway from being confronted with this situation usually concludes with, “Well, it’s not as if this is a life and death decision here.”

And here’s our start today- actually it is exactly that. What we decide and how we live our lives after we’ve decided (or decided not to decide because no decision is necessary etc., etc., etc.,) does in fact determine how we will spend our eternity.

If you’ve determined that you’re getting uncomfortable and frustrated now and just want to quit reading any more of this please refer to item #3 above.

Good, I’m glad you’re still reading. Here are some true facts.

God created us because he loved us. We are created in God’s image. God has breathed the Spirit of life into every human being that has ever lived or ever will live.

God gave us free will. We have the freedom and opportunity to accept God’s will for how we lead our lives or to reject any notion of God and do what we want. Adam and Eve immediately jumped off the tracks with the apple and the devil and the garden and all that and consequently everyone who is born of Adam is born into sin. That’s all of us.

Ever since mankind originally sinned God has been calling us back home. In order for us to find our way back home, a couple of things have to happen here. We have to understand that we are born into sin. We are sinners the moment we are born into this world. If you believe babies are innocent, try taking their bottles away from them and see what you get. We are guilty as charged and that there’s nothing we can do by ourselves to correct this. Again, if your response here is that you are a good person and that’s all you need to be to get into heaven, that’s not a true thing. If you want to argue this point, please go back to item #3 once more.

God is perfect and he cannot lie. As we are all born sinners, we must come to learn that fact before we can ask God to forgive our sins. God understands that we are born not understanding the rules or accepting our own sinful natures. We don’t automatically know we are sinners when we are born (although the older we get the more evident this fact becomes whether we admit it or not). We have to learn what the rules are before we can begin to understand that we can never keep the rules through our own efforts. God gave the ten commandments to Moses so that through the Jewish Nation man could over the centuries begin to understand that by ourselves we can never keep these laws. We can only begin to try and live within the laws after we have realized and confessed our sinful natures and have truly asked God for forgiveness.

We can’t be trusted. All of us, including me, are guilty all the time of saying one thing and despite any good intentions, doing another. We just can’t help ourselves. God gets this. But God decided to save us, not to pour out his anger on us. God sent his only Son, the true Son of God and of Mary, a human mother, to live the perfect life free of sin and to die on the cross as atonement for our sins. Then Jesus did something miraculous. After his death on the cross He rose from the dead. Jesus defeated death. This same death that had sentenced mankind to certain death apart from God ever since Adam’s fall was defeated once and for all when Christ rose from the dead. Jesus’ last words on the cross were, “It is finished.” What Jesus was saying was that by Jesus’s sacrifice, death is defeated. Satan has lost his battle. These sins that can now be forgiven as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross are not just the sins other folks, but your sins. All of the horrible, rotten detestable things you’ve ever done, said, lied about, covered up and hoped never ever get revealed are already known to God. Through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross for each of us, all of your sins can be forgiven. You can live your eternal life with God forever in perfect peace. All you have to do is believe that even though you’re a rotten sinner, if you confess and truly repent of your sins and if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and accept Him as your Lord and Savior and you set out to learn how Jesus wants you to lead your new life with His will guiding your steps and then with the support of God’s Holy Spirit you try every day to live that new life in Christ, God will count that as righteousness for you and you will be saved to life eternal.  God has always loved you. He wants you to come to know Him and accept his great love for you. He’s always right next to you, waiting for you to seek his face. At the end of your earthly life God wants you to come home to Him but this is a decision you have to make. God will not make this decision for you.

If this sounds like a plan you’d like to take a look at, pick up your Bible. It’s the most complicated and the most simple love story ever written. It’s a love letter signed by God written just to you.

A lot to soak up here, but it can be your beginning.

More next time.