Will Jesus Know You?
In Matthew 7:23, the Bible describes a most surprising and unexpected happening: On Judgment Day, Jesus will tell certain church people, “I never knew you.” Now, why didn’t Jesus know these church people? Jesus did not know these church people because they had never HONESTLY sought to know Him. Revelations 3:20 tells us: Behold, I [Jesus] stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Come Judgment Day, the people Jesus will not know…whether church-goer or not…are those who never opened the door of their heart and life to Him. The people Jesus will not know are those…who across the DECADES of their life…were too busy with their own interests, agendas, and activities…such that they didn’t have the time…nor the interest…in opening the door of their heart and life to Him. But, going back to the point of this article, SOME of the people Jesus will not know on Judgment Day were involved in church and in all kinds of church activities and ministries…they were around the things of God…and they knew all ABOUT Jesus…but they were not interested in actually KNOWING Jesus in a personal way…and they were for sure not interested in drawing closer to Him…or in surrendering their heart and life to Him…and that is why in the end, Jesus will NOT know them. Being involved in religion will NOT get you into Heaven. Belonging to a church will NOT get you into Heaven. Knowing ABOUT Jesus will NOT get you into Heaven. Being a leader, official, or executive in a church will NOT get you into Heaven. Being active in Christian ministries will NOT get you into Heaven. The ONLY thing that will get you into Heaven is KNOWING Jesus…so much so that your name is written in His Book of Life. Revelations 20:12,1512: And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.15: And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. If you and I want Jesus to know us on Judgment Day, then we each better see to it that we each seek to know Him TODAY.
Holiness Is Required…
If you claim to be saved, but live unholy, you have a “salvation” that will not allow you to see God. God says: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord“. (Hebrews 12:14) Salvation without holiness is a lie! Those who God saves are those who He changes. If there has been no change, then there has been no salvation! “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I Want To Go To Heaven. How Must I Live In Order To Go To Heaven?
The first step to going to Heaven is to receive the gift of Salvation…which is received by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as our Redeemer and by repenting of one’s past and present sins. For more on receiving the gift of Salvation, see these articles: Next, after receiving the gift of Salvation by believing and repenting, one should seek to grow and develop in their relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That is, one should first pray that the Lord sanctify them…sanctification being the work where the Lord changes one’s interests, desires, activities, agenda, and direction…the transformation from “forgiven and saved sinner” to “saint of God”. After sanctification, one should then pray to receive the Holy Ghost. After receiving the Holy Ghost, one should pray to receive the Gifts of the Spirit that God has for them. For more on this spiritual development process, see this article: Up to this point, I have been speaking about the “spiritual” aspect of going to Heaven. But, there is another aspect. In addition to the “spiritual” aspect of going to Heaven, there is also the “natural” aspect of going to Heaven. What is the “natural” aspect? It is the way a saved Christian LIVES their life and CONDUCTS their self. In short, the proper Christian way to live and conduct one’s self is to no longer live a life of sinfulness and to instead live a life of righteousness that is pleasing before God. That makes sense…but at the same time, that is a bit ambiguous…so let’s clarify these two items: 1. What do we stop doing so that we are no longer sinning? And… 2. What do we do to live righteous and pleasing before God? Well, the answers to these two questions are spread across the entire Bible…repeated many times in many different ways…so that EVERYBODY can completely and clearly understand EXACTLY what it is that God wants and expects from them. Obviously, this is one of the reasons why regular Bible reading is so important. But for here and now…to get us started and moving forward rightly…let’s simplify to a couple of places where the Bible summarizes God’s behavioral rules for us. In terms of what we should NOT do, Galatians 5:19-21 tells us the following: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. In terms of what we SHOULD do, Psalm 15:1-5 tells us the following: LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. So, there you go…if you want to go to Heaven, you now have two lists that describe how to LIVE and CONDUCT yourself…you now have a specific list of things to NOT do…and a specific list of things to do. Abide by these scriptures in the “natural” aspect of your life…and seek a deeper relationship with God in the “spiritual” aspect of your life…and you WILL INFALLIBLY make Heaven your eternal home.
The Essential Pillar
Just as a pillar holds something up in the natural, so does a stalwart Christian hold up those around him or her. Yes, you may be tired of standing strong… Yes, you may be tired of holding everyone around you up… But be encouraged and keep standing…keep holding those around you up…because without you holding them up, they would surely tumble down in ruin.
Which Type of Christian Are You?
Have a look at the following “types” of Christians and see which one fits you. Christian-Affiliate – This is a person who classifies and categorizes their self as a “Christian” but does not actively live the life of a Christian as defined by the Bible. That is, they affiliate their self with the “religion” of Christianity … but they live a life that is indistinguishable from that of a person who makes no attempt to serve or please the Lord and who lives only for self-pleasure. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Licensed Christian – This is a person who professes to be saved (see description of “Saved Christian” below) but there is no change whatsoever in their life. This is a person who joins a church group and then feels “licensed” to do whatever sinning they want … because after all, they are a member of the church. This is a person who loves to use God’s mercy and grace as a license to excuse and cover up their sinful living. This is a person who really has no interest in living a clean, Godly life … they just need some way to get people off their back when the subject of doing right or being saved comes up … and telling others they are already saved is how they do that. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. This person is a hypocrite whose judgment is soon-coming as stated in 2 Thessalonians 2:12, “That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Not-Responsible Christian – This is a person who does not want to have to overcome or stand against sin on their own. So, if God does not block the sin from coming to them, then they just go along with it … placing all responsibility for their right-living upon God and taking no personal responsibility their self for living right and being right before God. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Self-Made Christian – This is a person who lives a warped concoction … where they “call” their self a Christian … but in reality, they merely pursue a self-satisfying religion of their own making and choosing. This is a person who does not really care what God has to say in the Bible. They just want to do things in their own way that suits and satisfies them … and they can always find a way to explain, excuse, or justify why it is appropriate for them to ignore God’s truth and to instead live their own made-up “truth”. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Fence-Riding Christian – This is the kind of person who likes to fit in with sinners … who likes to be around sinners … and when they are around sinners … they dress like them, act like them, and talk like them. But then, when they are around Christian people, they switch over and will look, act, and talk the part of a Christian. This kind of person is a hypocrite and a blight on the name of Christ. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Week-Long Christian – This is the person who asks the Lord to forgive them of their sins … but within a day or two they are getting pressure from their friends … and sinful interests strongly beckon them … and within a week, they are right back to fully living the sinful life they were living before … they forget about God … they backslide away from Christ … and now, they are no longer saved. (Matthew 13) Years later, they still have not ever got back around to praying again. The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Down-And-Out Christian – This is a person who gets saved (see description of “Saved Christian” below) … and who does really good for a while … until a serious problem or situation shows up in their life … at which point, they get discouraged, disenchanted with God, or even offended at God … and they backslide away from Christ … they turn back to living a life of sin … and they are no longer saved. (Matthew 13) The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent of their sins and commit their life to following Christ. Side-Railed Christian – This is a person who gets saved (see description of “Saved Christian” below) … and does really well for a long while … they prove faithful even through hardships and problems … but eventually, they lose their love for the Lord … they lose their interest in the Lord … and they become more interested in pleasure, success, prominence, and renown … until soon enough, all of their time is devoted to self-gain and they have little time for God. Eventually, they reach the stage where they have completely backslid and they are no longer saved. (Matthew 13) The Bible makes it clear that this kind of person is not saved and is bound for Hell unless they repent
How Much Of A Christian Do We Have To Be In Order To Go To Heaven?
We each have the personal responsibility of learning what pleases God…and then living accordingly. So, in the interest of learning what pleases God, this article brings out some concepts that we can each consider within ourselves. And, if we find any areas within our self that can stand some improvement…well, hopefully we will each be man enough or woman enough to make those improvements within our self. With that, consider these two core questions… Romans 10:9-10 There are many in the realm of Christianity who have over-simplified these verses to the point that all a person has to do is say they believe in Jesus … that all a person has to do is confess that he or she is a “believer” … and with no other changes or improvements, that is enough to get them into Heaven. But, that simply is not true. It is not true because a sinner cannot step into true recognition of Christ’s Lordship and Divinity and remain the same old sinner. It is not true because a sinner cannot grasp the full work of Christ…and the atonement He made for sin’s penalty…without realizing he or she needs to make some serious improvements before God. In other words, a shallow “confession” followed by the occasional shallow “profession” is NOT enough for a person to be saved. It’s not true because as John 7:38 says: “He that believeth on me … out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” When a person TRULY believes, there IS going to be a difference in their life … changes and improvements ARE going to happen as that person seeks to move into pleasing the Lord … there IS going to be a difference as the things of God begin to flow out of him or her. Now, we will get to some scriptures in just a moment…but let’s consider this scenario first… During the years when we were raising our children … did we approve of … and support our children in being far less than their capabilities? Did we approve of their talent and potential just being squandered and wasted while they lived lazy, shiftless, worthless lives? Were we okay with and supportive of our children flunking their classes in school? Were we okay with and supportive of our children being lazy mooches who refused to work or develop themselves? Were we okay with and supportive of our children hanging out with sinful people? As long as our children weren’t dealing drugs … or murdering people … or engaging in newsworthy criminal activity … was it okay with us for our children to be low-caliber, low-quality, and low-value? Well, IF we were the kind of parents that we were supposed to be, the obvious answer is that none of these things were okay with us … and we certainly did not support them. So, here is a question: come Judgment Day, will God approve of us having been far less than we could have been? If it wasn’t acceptable to us for our children to be far less than they could be … can we expect God to be okay with us being far less than we could be? Do we honestly think that when it comes our time to stand before God and give account of our lives and our deeds … that He will be okay with an admission that we could have been more in Him … and done more for Him … but that it just wasn’t important enough to us to actually be more and do more? That takes us back to the first question… How much of a Christian do we have to be in order to go to Heaven? The story of the thief being saved on the cross is a popular story with some people. It is a story that appeals to some people because it is a story about a guy who did not live right or do right … but it was “okay” … because in the end, he was saved. And, there are some people who are essentially trying to pull off the same “strategy” with God … they are living their life according to their own rules and laws … and God’s rules and laws are secondary to their own … but they fully intend to repent and surrender to God’s rules and laws just before they die. But, following such a strategy is extremely dangerous … and the probability of success is extremely low. Let’s have a look at these familiar scriptures… Matthew 19:16-22 Notice the phrase in verse 16 … “what good thing shall I do“: The young man in these scriptures would have really liked it if any of these items would have been sufficient to get him into Heaven … but they were not enough. With the young man … as with us … God calls for total surrender and submission. Having said that, here is the point I really want to get to: this young man WAS a good moral man … based on how he lived, we would NOT call this young man a “sinner”. And yet, as far as the Bible records, he did NOT make it into Heaven … because he was not willing to fully surrender unto the Lord … he was not willing to fully follow after the Lord … he was not willing to place the Lord as first and foremost in his life. These scriptures let us know that being a good moral person is NOT enough to get us into Heaven. Let’s consider some more familiar scriptures… Matthew 25:1-12 As you look at these scriptures, notice that: Again, we find that it is not enough to be a good moral person who goes to church on Sunday morning. These scriptures let us know that we have to be MORE than that. Not only MUST we be good people … we also must be men and women who are filled with
When Life Takes An Unwanted, Unpleasant Detour…
Does everything ALWAYS goes exactly the way you want it to? Do things ALWAYS turn out exactly the way you want them to? Do you ALWAYS get exactly what you want? Well sometimes, the path of life takes unwanted, unpleasant detours from what we want, doesn’t it? Now, more often than not, unwanted, unpleasant detours are the result of our own: Willful ignorance … when we had plenty of opportunity to learn better but refused to embrace learning opportunities. Foolishness … when we could have been smart and wise … but we willfully chose not to be smart or wise. Stubbornness … when we would rather hurt our own self than give way to goodness with or for others. Rebelliousness … when we know better than to do something … when we know not to over-do something … when we know not to under-do something … but we rebelliously do harmful, damaging, destructive things anyway. Negative attitude … when we refuse to positively manage our own mind, attitudes, and feelings … and instead LET ourselves be negative, down, depressed, sad, unhappy, etc. Hatefulness … when we choose to be hateful, spiteful, vindictive, etc. because we want to hurt another person. Negative faith … when we hold so much conviction and belief about something unwanted and unpleasant … that our negative faith obligates God to give us something He never intended for us. Moreover, nowhere does the Bible teach that we should just lay back and passively, mindlessly want or expect God to do everything for us … or give us everything we want … with no learning, thinking, or effort on our own part. The Bible bears out … and experience bears out … that God predominately designed us and life so that we are free moral agents who are free to make our own choices and selections … who are free to pursue our own interests … who are free to learn whatever we want … and who are free to act and work as we see fit. Of course, we know that we should do all of our choosing, selecting, pursuing, learning, acting, and working in a wise, God-considering, God-honoring, God-pleasing manner … but for the most part, we are free to be wise … and we are free to be foolish … we are free to honor God and follow His precepts … and, we are just as free to not honor God or follow His precepts. And, life bears out that the wiser we are in our choosing, selecting, pursuing, learning, acting, and working, the more successful, pleasant, and enjoyable our life is … and the less-wise we are in these things, the less successful, less pleasant, and less enjoyable our life is. And so, to a large degree, the success or failure of our life is our own free-will handiwork. In other words, God will LET us bless our own selves … and He will also LET us destroy our own selves … or anything in between. That is the function of free-will-agency that God has designed and ordained for humanity. However, there ARE those times when our life seems to take a detour … there are times when no matter how good and how wise we have been … we find ourselves on an unwanted, unpleasant detour. I am talking about those detours where… • You find yourself in non-ideal circumstances that are outside of your control… • You feel stuck and it feels like you are doing nothing and going nowhere… • You are wanting to do good works but cannot for certain reasons… • You are doing your best to do right and good … and things still go bad… Here is the question I would like for us to answer for ourselves: Why does God send us on these detours into unwanted circumstances or conditions when that is not what we want? Why God sometimes sends us on unwanted, unpleasant detours… Psalm 25:12 – What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he (God) teach in the way that he (God) shall choose. (In general, the sooner we learn the lessons that God wants for us to learn, the sooner we will be free to move forward … and the longer we take to learn the lessons, the longer we will be on the detour. We can even forget the lessons and get to take more unwanted, unpleasant detours if we insist upon it.) Isaiah 32:17 – And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. (Sometimes, a detour is about bringing greater peace, quietness, and confidence into our life.) Philippians 1:12 – But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; Genesis 50:20 – But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. John 9:1-3 – And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. Jeremiah 17:10 – I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (In other words, God sometimes puts us on a detour to see if we will be faithful to Him … and when we prove faithful, He gives blessings to us accordingly.) Genesis 22:10-12 – And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
The Good Path In Life…
“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it“. Psalms 127:1 In other words, a person cannot truly succeed by going down any other path except God’s path…the one He has defined in His Word, the Bible. To try to succeed…to try to find happiness…to try to find satisfaction and fulfillment…on some other path that excludes God…or that is outside of God’s precepts…is foolishness. Any path except God’s path is one that is sure to lead to heartache and failure. Bizarrely, some people can literally EXPERIENCE a path of heartache and failure…a path that they may have started on without God…or one wherein they abandoned God somewhere along the way…and it inevitably results in heartache and failure…but they don’t learn the lessons…and after they cry their tears, they just take off on yet another path without God…one that will just as surely result in EVEN MORE heartache and failure. Equally as bizarre, some people will “talk your ear off” about “God” the whole while they walk their path wherein they have rejected God and His commandments, truths, and precepts. These are the people the Bible talks about who deceive their own selves (James 1:22). Now, I know that our “progressive/liberal” world espouses the idea that “right” and “truth” can be self-defined and self-selected…and that all ways can be “right” and “truth”. But, mark the words of Jesus Christ: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:13-15