(December 6, 2006)
God really does deserve all the credit after all He did all the creating. I cannot make so much as one molecule on a flies wing unless God grants me that ability. God created all that we know of and according to the scriptures very much more that we have not yet seen. About the only thing that I can take credit for is the choices I have made with the free will that God has given me to exercise in His creation.
There came a point in my life where I began to make a determined effort to find God and His ways and to live by them. Did God give me this will or did I conjure it up from the life that God gave me to work with? Where did this desire come from? Was it simply exercising free will that God has given everyone or did God single me out and call me to Him?
Surely it is all God’s doing that we are all presented with life and death. Most religions of the world promise eternal life to its adherents. The atheistic world offer us only death. These two perspectives have been around for thousands of years. I cannot claim to have invented either one but I, like everyone else, has a choice to believe that my destiny is either life or death.
Can anyone but God reveal His truth to a person? Or can anyone find out about it and adopt it? I have areas where I excel but to many I am inferior, overall I consider myself about as average as you can get. So I tend to think that anyone who seeks God with a genuine heart and mind will find Him. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Theologians will tell you that you cannot have a genuine heart and mind unless God gave it to you in the first place and He calls those who are His.
They say that you cannot join God’s church because God puts you in it. I say that God created me a free moral agent and it is up to me to decide if I will join Him and accept His invitation into His Kingdom through the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ or YHWH. What was His sacrifice for? It was for the forgiveness of my sins and yours. It is up to me to accept His sacrifice or not. It is up to me to decide if I will live under His rule and authority in obedience. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Choose life, God commands and pleads. How do I know that I have this choice? It is written in God’s word, the Holy Bible, for all to read. So how did I come to choose before I knew this line of scripture existed? God must have spoken to me directly or at least put it in my mind. How else could I know to choose life and to seek life? On the other hand who else would I search for other than the one who has resurrected from the dead? What else on earth is there to do with ones life that leads to life?
What is the truth? Is it possible to know the truth unless God reveals it? Does He not only reveal it to His chosen few? A great many claim to have the truth. They don’t all believe the same things. Is God a liar telling some one thing and others something else? No, most are genuinely deceived. They believe lies.They do not prove things out. There is a present god of this world who is not the creator God. He is know as Satan the Devil and he deceives the whole world. Only those who are truly God’s are not fooled. This is not a miracle per say it is a matter of studying God’s word to mankind, the Bible.
Many are called but few are chosen. In my mind anyone who reads the Bible is called by God. Anyone who has heard the name of Jesus is called by God. Only those who obey God’s commandments are chosen. Those are they who truly love Him. It is a matter of choice, to believe and to obey.
Some from all walks of life come to regret there Godless, futile and aimless ways. There are also some who have grown up in God’s church and have know the truth and lived by it all along. Neither is without fault or sin in their lives. Both are susceptible to vanity and error until death is done away with or Satan is put away. When we are changed to spiritual eternal beings then sin will no longer be a part of us.
And all the thanks will go to God our Father from those who chose His way.
The lesson to learn in this life is that we must become decisive. We must choose what is right and reject what is evil. We must change our ways to do good not wrong. We must harness our tongues to speak truth not lies, to utter truth not expletives or profanities, to utter encouragement and blessings not insults and cursings. This is what we must choose and DO. Those who DO the commandments are those who love God. Doing the commandments is exercising your free will. God will choose those who love Him, He always has, that’s the way He does things.
Repent, be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. This is the order of things in the religion of Christianity. To repent basically means to change. It means to change from having you first to having Jesus and the Father first. Notice that this is to be done before receiving the Holy Spirit. It is a matter of exercising your free will. It is in essence joining God or at the very least being willing to join God. Baptism is the religious ceremony that officially enacts the moment of your commitment. Your old priorities die and your new priorities are set in motion through baptism. Now you are ready to be welcomed into the Spiritual family of God as a new member and you receive God’s Holy Spirit, through the laying on of hands of God’s ministers. You could say that God’s Spirit puts you in His family or in His spiritual presence. You could also say that the new you willingly joins the Church. The new journey has begun. To God be the glory!
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