Shame

We've all done it. We see God's truth being mocked or degraded, and we simply walk on by. We see someone lost in the world, yet we do not stop to share with them what we know to be the only road to salvation. These are victories for the devil, for though we know the truth, he causes us to be ashamed of what we believe. The world mocks us for believing in and living for Jesus, but they mock because they do not know.

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
- John 1:5

We cannot allow ourselves to be deceived by the forces of evil in the world, for we know the ultimate costs for the decisions we make. We know that a life without Jesus is a life bound for Hell. We know that the Earth is full of people who do not know Jesus, and for their sake, we must not fade when Satan tries to make us feel ashamed. Even if we know that we may be rejected or mocked, we must stand firm in the truths that we know, and we must realize that our feelings of rejection are worth the eternities of unbelievers. God did not save us so we could hide our belief. We must stand up for these truths.

This world is not our home. We must not be concerned with how the world sees us, for it is not the world that saves us. It is God that brings us salvation, and we are now in this world to share the good news with the nations. What good is it if we shrink into the shadows and do not stand up for God's truth?

God, give us the strength to be not ashamed of our salvation. Show us how to live without fear of rejection. Teach us how to be shining examples in this dark world. Grow us to be strong in our faith and immovable in our convictions. Mold us to be the tools of your will, created for a purpose, and unafraid of the consequences of living for Christ in an unbelieving world. Thank you, Lord, for all you have done for us. Amen.

Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
- Luke 9:26

Hating the Sin

I sometimes find myself being judgmental. I see someone doing something that I believe to be sinful or foolish, and for a moment, I change the way I think about them. Yet, I then have to remember something: I'm no better. Sin has caused me to stumble just as it has done to others.

I find myself justifying my sins and condemning others, as though there is an understandable excuse to my mistakes, and the mistakes of others are simply due to their own bad decisions. No, a sin is a sin, and each one does the same thing: it separates us from God.

There is sin all around us. Each person we meet will have a sinful past, and each one will be struggling with things in the present. If we look at each other based on our mistakes and shortcomings, then we should all have terrible opinions of one another. Yet this is not how God sees us. If we have accepted Christ as our savior, then we have been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, and our sin no longer defines who we are. We are dead to sin, as the Bible says.

Hate the sin, not the sinner. We are to treat one another with love and compassion. Confront the sin: fight it, resist it, remove it. But don't push the sinner away. If each sinner was condemned for their sins, we would each be where we deserve to be: Hell. Yet each one of us has been given the gift of eternal life. We have each been forgiven for all the sins of our life: past, present, and future. Instead of Hell, we are here, and we need to see each other as God sees us: forgiven people, and children of God, no matter our sins.

As Jesus said, "May the one without sin cast the first stone." Put down the stone and love each other as Christ has already loved you.

Christianity is Not God's Plan

According to the labels of the world, I am a Christian, a follower of the religion known as Christianity. From an outside, unbelieving perspective, that makes sense, but it isn't what God wants for us. We should not label ourselves merely as Christians, but as Christ-followers. We should not simply be a follower of Christianity, but we should live as a part of the body of Christ. Christians are not just another subgroup of society, another label to throw around and apply to people with certain preferences.

Religion is man-made. It consists of rituals and regulations. It is something that man created in order to give a name and structure to our beliefs. It makes sense to do such a thing, certainly, but we shouldn't live for Christianity, nor should we look at our faith as only a religion, for that diminishes our faith and minimizes God's influence in our lives. God is real and his promises are true; we must live for the truth instead of living simply to follow a religion. But how do we do that? How do we live for God instead of living for a religion?

Understand that God is real and that He loves you, just as you are. He doesn't only live at church. He doesn't only talk to those people who are living righteous lives, and here is the truth: none of us are living righteous lives, and no amount of religion is going to change that. We are all sinners, each and every one of us, and that sin is separating us from God. There is no power you hold and no good deeds that you can do that will erase that sin. It is there, stained on your heart, and God knows it. He sees it and yet, He love you anyway. It is only the power of Christ and the sacrifice that Jesus gave on the cross that will wash away our sin. A lifetime of good deeds won't do it, neither will following every commandment or fulfilling every religious ritual. No amount of effort on your part will even lighten the stain. Yet, in an instant, the stain can be gone. It is not in our power to become sinless, but God has already done what is necessary to wash that sin away. All that we can do is say yes. Yes, God, I believe you are real, I believe you are more than stories and more than a mere religion. Yes, God, I believe your son came and died for me. Yes, God, I believe you have washed away my sins. Yes, God. Yes.

And then you will be saved.

It is grace that saves you, faith in the sacrifice of Christ. It is not baptism, for that is mere water. It is not communion, for that is merely bread and wine. There is no offering you can give and no service you can perform. All that can be done to save you has already been done by the son of God. You just need to believe.

Life is not about perfect living, for that is something none of us can accomplish, not even those who have accepted Christ as their savior. Yet I try to live my life in certain ways because I seek to live by God's standards, not because I live to fulfill some religious legality. I choose to live my life by those standards because I know I have been saved, and because I choose to show my love for God in that way. For instance, it was a long time ago that I decided to save myself for marriage, not because I did not have certain desires, but because I truly believed that it was best for me to wait, and that following God's commandments would bring me closer to Him. I did not do it because I felt it was the "Christian" thing to do, for living as a Christian isn't the point. I felt it was the Godly thing to do. And now, being married for almost five years, I know it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Righteous living will not save you, but being truly saved gives you the desire to live righteously, and to become closer to God. It is the relationship that matters, not the religion. Live righteously out of love, not out of obligation.

Church is a valuable part of life. We can worship God together and gain understanding of Him and His plan. We can form relationships with other believers and partake in Godly fellowship. Yet we must not live for church, for that is not God's plan. We must live for God. Salvation does not come from the church or any other Christian organization. Such institutions are often valuable assets to our faith and can do many great things in the world, but that must not be our focus. Christ is our focus; the church and other Godly entities are tools for God to use in our lives and throughout the world, but they are not something to live for. We must keep our eyes on God.

The Bible is not a mere guide, like a how-to book for computers or some other hobby or activity. The Bible is a God-breathed document that we should consider to be the greatest words in the world. God gave us His book to teach us and rebuke us, to correct us and to train us. We must not view it as simply another book, but the book that holds absolute and eternal truth.

In closing, we must not become wrapped up in the squabblings of religious people. God created us and redeemed us to work together as the body of Christ, and we must not trap ourselves in meaningless bickering about unimportant things. God is truth and Christ is our salvation. Let us come together not as followers of the same religion, but of lovers of the same great and glorious God, for it is the same blood that saved each of us. To God be all glory, from this day forward, into the eternity that we see before us.

Thank you God, for your great love, and for your sacrifice. Show us how to live for you. Show us how to love like you do. We know you are the absolute truth of life, and nothing we can do will ever repay what you have done for us. We love you, now and always. Amen.

Seven Myths Of Death

Our view of death is warped by our limited human understanding. We fail to grasp the truths of God concerning death, and it causes us to fear something that should not be feared. Below are seven myths that we humans often believe.

1. A Good Life is a Long Life. A lot of the times, our focus is on keeping ourselves healthy and living a good, long life. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but that shouldn't be our focus. The point of life is not to live as long as possible, but to fulfill God's plan for your life in the time you are given, whether that's twenty years or a hundred years.
2. A Good Life is a Wealthy Life. Life is not about building up treasures on Earth, but about building up treasures in Heaven. We should be more generous and use our resources for good, instead of simply building up our assets and wasting our wealth on material things.
3. We Deserve Tomorrow. I think this is one of the toughest for us to understand. As we all know, we're all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. The Bible says that we all deserve death. However, it's not that we deserve death in fifty years; we all deserve it now. This may seem like a morbid thought, but we must realize that each day we have is truly a gift from God, and not a right we have. We should be thankful for every day, because for all of us, tomorrow is not guaranteed.
4. Life is Fair. It, of course, is not fair. Some good people die young, and some evil people live long. Some lives are tougher, and some are easier. Life isn't fair, and in reality, it doesn't need to be. Life should not be about complaining that things aren't fair, life is about doing what you can with what God has given you.
5. Our Life is But Our Own. America is a very individualistic country, with the whole "look out for number one" mentality. We're not on this Earth to live as we like; we should be mindful of the needs of others, and more importantly, surrender to the will of God in our lives. It's about His plan, not ours. For each of us, that plan includes different purposes, different places, different times, and different life spans.
6. Good People Go To Heaven. This is also a tough one to understand, but the Bible clearly teaches that salvation is acquired through faith in Christ and not through being a "good" person. Saved through grace, not through works. None of us could ever be "good" enough to earn our way into Heaven.
7. Death is the End. We all fear death, but that's due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to die. It is not the end, but merely the beginning of the next (and final) phase in our lives. We must not hold on to our lives so tightly in our fear of death that we never step out of our comfort zones in faith.

The Case for Death

One of the undeniable truths about our human lives is that, eventually, they end. Each of us was born of a woman, our bodies knitted together in her womb. Someday, each of our bodies will lose its vibrancy; blood will no longer flow through our veins, and life will no longer pour out from within our physical selves. Death is simply an inevitability that we must accept.

Even as we accept and understand that our future includes death, it is true that we often fear it, holding on to our lives and our remaining years with all our might. Humans fear their death like nothing else, and that fear stems from the fact that we simply do not fully comprehend the part that death plays in lives. We miss God’s plan for us; His plan for the end and the beginning of each human life. For all things, good or bad in the sight of men, work together for the goodness of God.

Just as a student’s graduation marks the end of a time of schooling, the death of a human marks the end of their time on this Earth. It is a transition; the end of one era, and the beginning of another. A student attends school to learn and ready him or herself for a future career. Those students who do not walk the path of learning will find themselves ill-equipped for the future. Humans who do not walk the path of Christ will find themselves at the end of their life without a savior.

The scriptures tell us not to fear. Once Jesus has become our lord, there is nothing to separate us from Him and the salvation that we now have. Nothing in this world, no powers in the spiritual realms, and not the eventual death that leads from this life into the next.

We must change the way we view death, for it is not the end, but merely a time of change. It is not something to be feared, but something to be understood. As strange a thought as this might be, death is something to look forward to. Not in any depressive or suicidal manner, but in such a way that we long to be with Christ in the world to come. For this world is not our home; we are as aliens in a foreign land, and Heaven is our true home. Our father waits there for us, and we should wait patiently and yet with excitement for the day when we walk those streets of gold. We will no longer be strapped with the problems of this world, but will have all of eternity to be with Christ.

Our time on this Earth is precious, and even while we are young and the years seem to stretch out before us, death is coming for each human, some long before they expect it. We know not what day will be our last, but that is not for us to choose. God has planned each day of our lives, and He knows what day He will call you away from your body and into His presence. Do not fear that hour, for a greater glory awaits us than we could ever experience in these bodies. Live each day as though death was around the corner, for it truly is, even if we do not see it.

God holds your life in His hands, and His timing is perfect. Trust in Him and do not fear the future, and do not fear death, for on the other side of our last day is the first day of a beautiful beginning.

Life's Truths

These are truths that define how I live my life. To me, these are unquestionable absolutes.

There is a God. I can guarantee I would not live my life in the same way if I didn’t believe there was a God. You can still live by a moral code if you don’t believe in God, but that moral compass is set by human standards, not by God. If there was no God, why would I believe that human life is as sacred as it is? If we are not God’s most prized creation, are we not merely as valued as the lilies of the field and the animals of the Earth? If there is no God, there is no sacred reason to do many of the things I do and have done.

Life is not that serious. I'm one of those people that can find humor in almost anything. We seem to get worked up about things that don't really matter. Worrying about and getting upset over the little things does nothing to help anything. Pick your fights; and make sure they're worth fighting for. Take a step back and realize what is important and what isn't. And have a good laugh.

Life is not a joke. It may be a fine line to tread, but while life is not that serious, it's not a joke either. Do not waste your life on Earthly things. Live your life to the best of your potential, and walk God's path, but do it with a smile on your face.

Life is fragile. I am not afraid of death. I try to live my life according to the plan of Christ, and I do not know all that plan holds. Whether my life ends tomorrow or when I'm a hundred years old, I know that my life is fully held within God's hands, and that His purpose will be done.

Life is eternal. After we leave this planet, Heaven is waiting, and there we shall live forever. I know that our Earthly deaths are not the end; there is a much greater and more glorious future ahead of us.

Life is not unscripted. God is in control of everything. The Bible says each of our days were planned far before we were even thought of by human minds. It is not our place to worry about everything in this life, for God has already figured it all out.

Life is imperfect. At least, we humans are imperfect. This leads to imperfect relationships and situations, and to pain and hardships. The fact is that each of us has suffering. While some may have it worse than others, we all must fight against it, for through God, any hardships of this world can be overcome. There is nothing that this world can throw at you that, through Jesus, you can't handle.

Life is absolute. One of the world's most popular attitudes is "Find your own truth." While we all must find the path that God has made uniquely for us, there is still only One God, One Jesus, and One way to Heaven. You cannot get to Heaven through good works alone, or any other way besides belief in Jesus Christ. It can't be done, and that's the way it is.

Life's worth is not measured in years. I would rather die tomorrow but have walked God's path than live a hundred years separated from Christ. We all have the same amount of eternity ahead of us.

Life's worth is not measured in dollars. Money and other Earthly things will not get you into Heaven. As the saying goes, "He who dies with the most toys, still dies."

Life's worth is not measured by the opinions of others. Do not let others bring you down or tell you that you are less than what you are. The truth is, that you are an amazing creation of an amazing God, nothing less. You are uniquely created to be just the person that God intended. He will use your strengths – and your weakness – to achieve His purposes in your life.

Life's true worth is not measured on this planet. The race we run does not have its finish line on this side of Heaven. When we leave this world and enter the next, then the race will reach its finish, and we will then have eternity to celebrate it.

Life's guidebook is the Bible. The Bible is absolute truth; authored by God and simply inked by men.

The Sin Paradox

Sin is a paradox.

I know I am a sinner, and that sin is inevitable, yet I hate it when it happens.

It is unavoidable, yet intolerable.

It separates me from God, yet learning from them makes me stronger and brings us closer.

I know something is a sin, yet I do it anyway. I know something is good, yet I fail to do it.

I look down at others who do things I know to be sin, and yet I also do things I know to be sin. I find fault in the mistakes of others, yet make excuses for why my faults aren't as bad.

I sin because of my human nature, yet it is my weakness that makes me human.

Sin is what I hate, yet my desire for it is strong.

I try to hide my sins from the one who sees everything, yet I fully reveal my faults to the blind world.

I seek to be perfect, yet I know it is unobtainable. I have no desire to die, yet I know that perfection will only be reached after my last breath.

I sin in full knowledge of its wickedness because I long for its pleasure, yet even my sinful nature cannot enjoy it because of the guilt I feel.

I regret today what I did yesterday, yet my flesh already has its sights on the sins of tomorrow.

I wish I could change the sins of my past, yet those sins are part of who God created me to be today.

God forgave my sins before they were committed, and saw into my eternity before I was born. He loved me, though he knew I would betray him; he wrote my name in the book of life, though he already knew I would deserve death. He is eternal, yet died for the mortal; he is perfect, yet was slain for the wicked.

I love him with all my heart, though my heart is impure and stained. I learn from him, though I cannot comprehend him. I need him, though I cannot touch him. I follow him, though I cannot see him. I live for him, though he already died for me.