The wind sometimes echoes the life we want to live. Harsh and sometimes gentle. We live one way and then another. The ups and downs of life. Most of us get some good stories out of life that we can tell our friends by the bonfire. We can be down one minute and then some news passes our ears that lift our spirits.
For those of us who come to believe in God. Life can be like the tail end of that paragraph. A lot of us live with our lives in shambles with no hope one day, and then we hear the word of God and take the time to check it out. BAM, life is in shambles but now we have hope and the peace of Jesus Christ in our mess.
I will admit freely to making some dumb decisions sometimes. I think we all do, even when we try to do good. But, God gives us that hope when we take the time to know the story of Jesus Christ. Psalms 23:3 says, “He leads me in right paths for His great name’s sake.” In Samuel 12:22 a truth “The Lord will not reject his people, because he is pleased to make you His own.”
Most people have their own view of the gospel. About Jesus Christ. About the kingdom of heaven. For some, biases from what they have heard about God keep them from receiving the true knowledge of God. But the truth is that we are not good people. Just look around the world or read the news. We are people born to sin. But God made a way for us to walk away from that life by sending Jesus Christ to overthrow death.
We don’t have to be good people to turn to God. Jesus came to save the worst of us, take my word for it. To be saved we must believe and call on the name of Jesus Christ. When we believe in God, we believe that he sent Jesus Christ to be the redeeming price for us, from sin. John 3:16 tells us that whomever, meaning, everyone born on earth is invited to believe and have everlasting life. There is no requirement to believe in Jesus. You don’t need to have a clean life to believe. Just believe.
Jesus came for the sinners of the world, like myself and you. In Luke 5:32, Jesus tells the people around him “I didn’t come to call the righteous, I came to call sinners”. This is the constant theme we see as we read the Bible; Jesus visiting sinners and healing the sick and sticking with the poor, sometimes having dinner with the worst of society.
To believe God you only need to be willing. When you hear the gospel preached when you are moved to pray in the name of Jesus, if you are invited to study the bible with someone and your heart is moved – that is your invitation. You don’t need to make yourself ready, because God justifies those whom He calls, and Jesus’s sacrificial blood will clean you of sin.
When we choose to believe God, we change from the inside out. That means the Lord works in your heart as it is written in Philippians 2:13 “It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose”. In short, God doesn’t leave people the way He finds them, so you don’t have to worry about being good. God makes us good over the course of our lives, from the moment we believe. In the book of Galatians 5:22-24, we are told to bear the fruits of the Spirit.
When we believe God it is not a matter of being good, but doing righteousness. Jesus gives us a hint of what that means in John 14:15-21 when he says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments”. By studying and applying believers come to know how good it is to live and obey the commandments of the Lord.
One of the surest ways I found to show I believe God is by studying his word. When we say we believe that is great. But actions are the truest show of our character. While we can play church, it is better to put the words of God into practice. Don’t let anyone force you into doing anything you do not want to do. That is not gospel. Gospel is us freely living life the way we want to. The people of God choose to follow His commandments.
Those who believe God will come to know Jesus through prayer and studying scriptures. Jesus says the one who loves him will keep His commands. That is to be understood. It is like our parents, those of us who love our parents obey them. Thus says Jesus, the one who loves me will keep my commandments. Our actions are a good mark of who believes God and who does not.
When we believe God and begin our transformation, from the heart. It translates into the way we live our lives. In my own experience, I have gone from anxious and moody, from darting sarcasm and snark at people to wanting to keep my cool under pressure. The Lord did these things for me because of his promises to us if we believe in Him. Life is not easy but is worth every effort to live.
The difference in my life is, I have peace and calm that allows me to critical-think situations that used to shut me down with anxiety. I now live the life I want to live without fear, thanks to the Lord. When I need to make decisions, I choose from better fruits that used to be in me, so that I no longer make as many dumb decisions as I used to. All of us go through a process. All processes take time to go through.
With the Lord guiding me, I have been able to make better choices. I am not problem-free as that is not what salvation is about. Salvation is deliverance from sin and being prepared to live in the kingdom of heaven with God. But even now the faith I have been given in Jesus allows me to live without getting anxious or panicking like I used to. This peace I have in Jesus allows me to be at peace, even in trouble because I know the Lord will order my footsteps in righteousness, for his great name’s sake (Psalms 23:3).
When we believe God and must face the storms of life, we don’t always escape the storms of life. Sometimes we must go through them. It can get hard and unyielding, this life. But if we believe God, as we persevere, we are constantly reminded to trust in Jesus and not ourselves. When we believe God and trust him, we learn how faithful God is to His word. From these storms, we gain confidence in Jesus’s ability to come through for us over time. More important we come to understand that at times, we only need to wait out the storms of life.
Yes, there are times when it feels like I’m on my own. There are times when life takes the starch out of me. Times I just want to lay down and stay down. But in all these times I am reminded as I study of what those who went before my generation endured. The bible of full of stories of men and women who had to endure hardship. In the end, God rescued some. Some faced prison. Some died. But each lived with the hope of salvation in Jesus.
When we believe God we have assurance. Jesus says that “though the one who believes in him dies, he will live.” That is the ultimate promise of believing God about His salvation. When we die, we wait for the return of Jesus where He will call us up to meet him above the earth. So the lives of believers isn’t just about the time we spend at this current time. We wait patiently for Jesus to return and change us into our eternal forms.
That is the part of salvation that is worth holding. We will live forever with God. Believing God is not just power and wealth and stuff. But eternal life and a kingdom ruled by God himself with no sin, no death, no wickedness. A life forever with God in peace. All we must do is believe in Jesus Christ, whom God sent to save the world from sin and from death.
What do you think? Have you ever heard the story of Jesus Christ and of the kingdom of heaven? Would you like to study with me to know more?
