Are you saved from or lost in your sin? God says that you, alone, choose for yourself where you shall live for all eternity. He has prepared only two places and conditions for us to choose to spend our eternity and we must make our choice here in this life before we die. For the saved who trust His Christ there is eternal peace, joy, fellowship, and security. For the lost who reject and neglect His Christ, they shall have chosen to live in the opposite eternal conditions of darkness, pain, and isolation.
Whether you consider yourself a friend or enemy of God Almighty, or you try to be a bystander or are in denial of such things, I need to challenge you with these MOST IMPORTANT questions you shall ever face in your earthly life, for God challenges us to examine our lives at the foundation of what we claim to believe. Jesus said that what we believe and trust proves to be an eternal difference between unstable sand that gets washed away, betraying those who build on it, versus solid bedrock that withstands storms without any problem. Faith in Christ and God's Word is what Jesus equated to the bedrock. All other beliefs He equated to unstable sand.
The question that God asks us is NOT whether we think we are "all set", or comfortable, or feel good, or following our hearts. God wants us to prove ourselves by His Standards and His Word, according to repentance and faith, to which He calls us. God's challenge scares a lot of people, and, yet, a lot of people mock at such questions. God says that, compared to all the world's population, earthly religions, and philosophies, there are only a few souls who seek, find, and accept the free gift that God is offering to all humanity. How sad that people love themselves and their sin more than God, His Word, and His Christ (who suffered, died, and rose for their salvation).
These are not my questions, but these have been God's challenges to waken all humanity throughout all ages. IF you don't believe it, pick up God's Word, the Bible, and read it through for yourself. Ask God, the Author, to help you understand what He wants and needs to teach you, for God has always offered us all the riches of spiritual wisdom, salvation, and understanding when we submit ourselves to Him and to His Word, IF we are willing to honestly examine ourselves, what He says about our sin, and be open to accept His truth.
In Romans Chapter One God tells us the sad story about how and why so many people push Him and his salvation away. But, He also tells us there in Romans One that everyone starts life knowing who God, our Creator, really is, but, that it is our own personal and culturally based choices and lusts that cause us to reject Him and His call to repentance and faith in Christ. Do not deceive yourself about neglecting or ignoring His call. Ignoring His call or saying, "I'm not ready now.", are both choices that reject Him and what He says.
To avoid deceiving ourselves, and to get right with God, we all need to scripturally examine what we claim to believe, lest we shall have allowed ourselves to be led into eternal damnation, for it is the devil himself that sneakily and boldly taunts us with his lying question, "Yea, hath God said?". Worldly, fleshly systems and people, also, mock at, deny, and fight against the serious nature of these things, but, God says that the choice of your eternal destiny is yours to make and there are no excuses. We cannot blame anyone else but ourselves, IF we choose eternal damnation.
Have YOU searched God's Word and your soul, then made that great spiritual choice of faith in selecting God's Way for yourself? Or, did someone else try to get you into a religion before you were able to think and speak for yourself, before you sought, read, and searched God's Word, honestly, for yourself?
Worldly religions contradict God's ways by promising all sorts of false things that God never said. By contrast, as God calls us to His great salvation (Psalm 49:7), He says that no one besides His Christ (Jesus) can pay anyone's sin debt. IF you have not prayerfully or honestly submitted yourself to God's Word and sought His riches already, then, please, do so now. Don't wait. God wants us all to wake up from the deadness of sin and the darkness in which we live, that we should come to and abide in God's Light that only exists in Christ Jesus. Your choice of eternal destiny is up to you, with Christ in glory or without Christ in eternal fire. God, only, gives us two options: eternal salvation or eternal destruction. Throughout His Word, it is clear that we choose our eternal destiny, and He gave us free will to choose.
Most philosophies and religions in this world tell you that either you don't need God or that you can earn your way into God's favor by human works. As the serpent, the devil, tricked Eve by his infamous question, "Yea, hath God said?", worldly faith systems (including atheism) continue to use that satanic lie to trick souls into following their ways instead of encouraging us to follow God's One Way. Don't try to second guess God's Word. Accept it, for it offers you eternal life.
Throughout His Word, you can see for yourself, God has repeatedly and consistently made it clear that no earthly person, no organization, no saint, no voodoo, no human works, no baptism, no prayers for the dead, no amount of repeated prayers or chants, no beads, no amount of personal suffering, no reincarnation, no purgatory, no neglect or denial of God's truth can ever save you, pay for your sin, OR get you into the family of God. God says that there is no other name by which we must be saved from our sin and eternal death, and that He only accepts our "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ".
Whether we like it or not, throughout His Word, God has made it abundantly clear that each of us shall live forever, either with Him in Christ or to be cast, as a lost soul at the Final Judgment of God, into the lake of fire. Furthermore, God has made our choice very easy by reducing all spirituality to a choice between one of two destinies. He gives us no other option, and has warned humanity, in His love, that He does not want us to choose eternal damnation, though He allows us to make that choice for ourselves. Death, hell, and the lake of fire are NOT a joke, though many mock the righteous judgment of God.
We are the ones who make this choice difficult on ourselves because of our sinful love of the world, instead of our need to love God more than the world. Choosing to live in the lusts of the world never satisfies our longing for fellowship with God in Christ. Remember that He came and offered Himself for your sin and mine, so that He could set us free to choose to live in Him by faith and obedience to His Word, not in subjection to our flesh and worldly lusts. Our choice is between choosing to enslave ourselves to sin or submitting ourselves to God in Christ. God says that all our decisions boil down to one of those two options: eternal life with Him or eternal death and suffering separated from Him, because of the choice we made to either accept or reject His Christ.
If you really have trusted Jesus for God's salvation, the following passages challenge those of us who say that we believe in God and His Christ, to be sure that we have not only placed our faith and trust in the Christ of God, but, also, that we are really living the life to which He calls us in Jesus Christ.
James 4:1-17
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and
desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye
ask not.
3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
12 There is one lawgiver,
who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
Ephesians 4:1-32
1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
2 With all lowliness and meekness, with
longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
27 Neither give place to the devil.
28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
27 Neither give place to the devil.
28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
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