Start Your New Life Today (2 page)
If you haven’t done a good job of running your own life, why not turn it over to the One who created you and knows more about you than you will ever know about yourself? If you start having trouble with an automobile, you take it back to the people who manufactured it to fix it. A similar principle is true with God. He created you and loves you very much. If your life is not satisfying to you, then take it to Him to fix it.
If you want to have a relationship with God here on earth and live with Him for eternity, you need to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. We have all sinned and we all need a Savior. God sent His only Son to pay the penalty for our sins. He was crucified and shed His innocent blood as payment for our wrongdoing. He died and was buried, but on the third day He arose from the dead and is now seated in heaven, at the right hand of God the Father. He is your only hope of having peace, joy, and right standing with God.
Your life will not change unless you make that very important decision to receive Jesus as your Savior. The choice to accept new life in God is available to everyone. No one is left out. And no one can make your choice for you. It is yours and yours alone to make. What quality of life do you desire to have? Do you really want to follow the example you see in our society today? God’s Word tells us we came into the world with nothing and we will go out with nothing (see 1 Timothy 6:7). Don’t spend your life on things that will end up in a junkyard somewhere. Spend it laying up treasure in heaven (see Matthew 6:20).
The choice to accept new life in God is available to everyone. No one is left out.
God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the beginning there was God and in the end there will be God. Every person will stand before Him and give an account of their life (see Romans 14:12). Do you want to use your life to build up treasures in heaven and let God use you in a way that can affect others for eternity? As you use your life for eternal significance, you will find the fulfilling life on earth you have been seeking. Anything we give to God immediately takes on immortality. If we give Him our time, talents, and possessions, He can use them to do good things here and for eternity. If we give them to the world, they will end up in a junkyard. It might be good for all of us to visit a junkyard once a year to remind ourselves that all temporal things eventually end up there.
Leave Guilt Behind
S
in is deliberate disobedience to the known will of God. We have all sinned. There is no one on the earth who never sins (see Ecclesiastes 7:20). This is the bad news: “All have sinned and are falling short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives” (Romans 3:23).
There is also good news. We can all be forgiven and made right with God: “[All] are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favor and mercy) through the redemption which is [provided] in Christ Jesus” (v. 24).
Sin leads to destruction. God’s Word says our sin will find us out (see Numbers 32:23). Sin brings a curse and obedience brings blessing (see Deuteronomy 28). For a season, people may appear to be unaffected by their sin. Their lives may appear to be as good as anyone else’s, but in the end there will always be consequences for choices made. God speaks about the outcome of people attempting to live without Him: “And I will bring distress upon men, so that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord; their blood shall be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s indignation and wrath. But the whole earth shall be consumed in the fire of His jealous wrath, for a full, yes, a sudden, end will He make of all the inhabitants of the earth” (Zephaniah 1:17–18).
These scriptures are fearsome, but they need not strike fear in the heart of a sincere believer in Jesus Christ. We who believe in Jesus shall never come up for judgment or condemnation (see John 3:18). God forgives our sins when we admit them, are sorry for them, and are willing to allow Him to help us turn entirely away from them.
“If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just (true to His own nature and promises) and will forgive our sins [dismiss our lawlessness] and [continuously] cleanse us from all unrighteousness [everything not in conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action]” (1 John 1:9). As new creations in right standing with God through Jesus, we have been provided the way to ask for and receive forgiveness and turn away from what we did wrong through the power of God’s Spirit working in us.
The people who choose a life of sin rather than a life of obedience to God experience misery in their souls. Man lives in a body made of flesh and bones, but man is actually a spirit and has a soul. The soul is comprised of the mind, will, and emotions. The soul is the personality of man. No matter what people without Jesus do or possess, they cannot find anything to completely satisfy them. Sinners, in choosing to run their own lives instead of giving God control, suffer in their minds. When things don’t go their way, they are in mental anguish and become frustrated or angry knowing nothing of the way of faith. To trust God—a power greater than themselves—is incomprehensible to them. They never allow rest to enter their minds—or their souls. Their lot in life is misery, misery, and more misery!
The constant companion of sinners is guilt. They are unable to escape it. They may try a variety of ways to ignore it, but deep down inside they know their lives are not right. The Bible is divided into two parts representing man’s condition and God’s solution to remove the sin and guilt separating man from Him. The first part, the Old Testament, is just that, the old way, representing the Old Covenant God used to cover the sins of the people until the time came for Jesus to establish a New Covenant.
Under the Old Covenant, the people’s sins could be covered through a system of giving sacrifices for their sins. The sins were covered but never removed. The guilt was always present. However, under the New Covenant—the second part of the Bible, the New Testament—Jesus became the perfect and final sacrifice. He didn’t cover the sins but removed and completely washed them away, along with the guilt that accompanies them.
You need not wait for God to do something. He has already done what needs to be done. He gave His only Son to die in our place because only a perfect and sinless sacrifice could be offered to pay for our misdeeds. Justice has been satisfied and we can enjoy a life of freedom through believing in Jesus Christ and entering an intimate relationship with God through Him. We cannot go to God on our own—we need an advocate. We need someone as a go-between, and that someone is Jesus. In order to bring us to God, Jesus stood in the gap between us and God, the gap that our sin had created.
The only way to enter God’s rest is through believing in Him (see Hebrews 4:3). Just as a child has his father in him (genetically), so God was in Christ reconciling the world back to Himself. God loves the people He created, and He is unwilling to see them live enslaved to sin without providing a way out. Jesus is the way!
God loves the people He created, and He is unwilling to see them live enslaved to sin without providing a way out. Jesus is the way!
Jesus has already paid for your sins. All you need to do is believe it and learn how to receive what He did and has for you to begin walking in your new life.
You Are Free
W
hen you become a new creation, Jesus removes your guilt. You may have already received Jesus and started your new life. Even though you know Jesus legally removed your guilt, do you still feel guilty?
God gave us emotions to enjoy, but they can also work against us and control our lives. Part of the process of learning how to allow God’s Spirit to work in us to transform us is in learning how to manage our emotions. To do that we start by taking God’s Word as the truth over the direction our emotions are trying to lead us. The way you learn the difference is through spending time reading, studying, and thinking about God’s Word. As you do this “renewing of your mind” (see Romans 12:2), the power of God’s Spirit, life, and truth in His Written Word works to transform you and your thinking. There is actually power inherent in the Word of God. As we take it into ourselves through reading, studying, or thinking about it, things actually change in us. Our mind changes, our emotions are calmed, and our wills are made pliable and willing to bend in God’s direction.
Studying scriptures about freedom from guilt and condemnation will actually strengthen you and enable you to resist them when they come. Always remember there is power in the Word. Go to the concordance in the back of your Bible where you will find a list of scriptures by topic. Look up the scriptures you find on guilt and condemnation and write them down and read them out loud frequently. As you do this you are renewing your mind to think the way God thinks, and you will eventually enjoy complete freedom from the negative emotions of false guilt.
Believers in Jesus Christ don’t have to spend their lives feeling guilty; and they don’t have to sacrifice their peace and joy, because Jesus became a sacrifice once and for all and there is no sacrifice that ever needs to be added to His. Under the Old Covenant, the sacrifices had to be made over and over again, yet they never removed the guilt. Jesus became one sacrifice good for all time and it does remove the sin and guilt.
Learning the Word of God and obeying it no matter how we feel forms a lifestyle of obedience, ushering in blessings beyond compare.
The guilt is legally removed, but we may still need to learn how to live free from the
feelings
of guilt. In the new life lived for Christ, we learn how to no longer allow our feelings to rule us. Spending the time to learn what the Word of God says gives us the knowledge to discern and live according to the truth. When we practice responding to situations we encounter in our daily lives with actions based on the truth of God’s Word, we continue walking in the direction God has for us in our new life. Reacting with our emotions often takes us in a wrong direction. Learning the Word of God and obeying it no matter how we feel forms a lifestyle of obedience, ushering in blessings beyond compare. Instead of going through life reacting emotionally we can choose to act according to God’s Word. We can examine each situation and choose to do what Jesus would do in that same situation. As we make right choices we will reap good consequences and our lives will be much more enjoyable.
Simply Receive God’s Love for You
T
he story below illustrates the power of John 3:16 (
KJV
): “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In the city of Chicago, one cold, dark night, a blizzard was setting in. A little boy was selling newspapers on the corner. People were inside, out of the cold, and the little boy was so cold he really wasn’t trying to sell many papers. He walked up to a policeman and said, “Mister, you wouldn’t happen to know where a poor boy could find a warm place to sleep tonight, would you? You see, I sleep in a box, up around the corner there and down the alley, and it is awful cold. It sure would be nice to have a warm place to stay.”
The policeman looked down at the little boy and said, “Well, I’ll tell you what to do—you go down the street to that big white house and knock on the door. When they open the door, just say, ‘John 3:16’ and they will let you in.”
So the boy did. He walked up the steps to the door and knocked, and a lady answered. He looked up and said, “John 3:16.”
The lady said, “Come on in.”
She took him in, sat him down in a split-bottom rocker in front of a great big fireplace and left. He sat there for a while and thought to himself,
John 3:16—I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a cold boy warm.
Later she came back and asked him, “Are you hungry?”
He said, “Well, just a little. I haven’t eaten in a couple of days, and I guess I could stand a little bit of food.” The lady took him into the kitchen and sat him down at a table full of wonderful food, and he ate and ate until he couldn’t eat anymore. Then he thought to himself,
John 3:16—I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a hungry boy full.
She took him upstairs to a bathroom with a huge bathtub filled with warm water. He sat there and soaked for a while. As he soaked, he thought to himself,
John 3:16—I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a dirty boy clean
. The lady came in and got him, took him to a room, tucked him into an old feather bed, pulled the covers up around his neck, and kissed him good night. She turned out the lights. As he lay there in the darkness, he looked out the window and saw the snow coming down on that cold night. He thought to himself,
John 3:16—I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a tired boy rested.
The next morning she came up and took him down again to the same big table full of food. After he ate, she took him back to the same old split-bottom rocker in front of the fireplace. She got a Bible, sat down, and said, “Do you understand John 3:16?” “No, ma’am, I don’t. The first time I ever heard it was last night when the policeman said to use it.” She opened the Bible to John 3:16 and began to explain to him about Jesus. Right there in front of that fireplace, he gave his heart and life to Jesus. He sat there and thought,
John 3:16—I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a lost boy feel safe.
(Author unknown)
God loves us because He wants to, not because we deserve it.
Are you ready to receive the Father’s love for you? It is a free gift and can only be received by faith. God loves us because He wants to, not because we deserve it. His love is unconditional and never ending. The Bible says it endures forever so we might as well receive it because it is not going to go away. If you have difficulty believing God loves you, begin confessing out loud that He does. You will eventually find that you really believe what you began saying by faith alone.