Attend a funeral once a year to pause and contemplate your own life.
If it's true that we only live once, then that is not an excuse for us to do stupid "fun" stuffs. If we really are only to live once, we might as well get it right so that when it's our time, we are ready.
Realize that in your own funeral, people will not be talking about how much you loved yourself but how much you loved the people around you.
Love. Be the reflection of the very nature of who created you. God is love.
Those who know me from high school and college days most likely know that I always loved numbers.
Here I'm using the help from the world of numbers to illustrate an exceeding amazing spiritual truth about our Lord Jesus Christ. Stay with me.
In the middle of the number line is 0. Moving to the right and to the top we count positive numbers 1, 2, 3, 4..1000..10, 000, 1 million, 1 billion, 1 trillion, 1 x 10 to the power of 7, 1 x 10 to the power of 1, 000, 1 x 10 to the power of 1 million. The numbers go on. It is literally infinite. Beyond our intellectual grasp.
Moving to the left and the bottom is going to the negative numbers, which is the same infinity as well. The pendulum swings equally on both directions.
Now, try measuring the length of that from point 0 to the infinity to the right. Can you? How about from the infinity left to the infinity right. Can you? From infinity below to the infinity above. Can you measure it? You can't.
No one can because our 6 pound complex brain is finite, it cannot be completely trusted. We are finite. We are humans.
Now, when you acknowledge that someone loves you and you love them back, don't we normally love them back the way they do to us? That is if we really love them.
How is it then that we live in a church culture where a Christian says he loves Jesus but with seemingly no joy or enthusiasm about it at all? Does he really know the love of Christ? Does he really understand who Jesus is? Is he able to comprehend the love of Christ?
And if he does love Jesus, what in the world can shut him up? Don't we all get stubborn when we are truly in love? We don't really care what people say, whether it is immoral or not to them. We just don't care. We love and it is when we love that we feel we are alive.
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
We love Him because He loved us first.
To the unbeliever, I am talking about spiritual things here. God is Spirit and so we need the Spirit to understand Him. Eyes to see, tongue to taste, ears to hear, nose to smell, Spirit to understand the Spirit of God.
You can only have His Spirit if you confess your sins and trust Jesus as your Lord and that He saved you from your sins. There is more to this earthly life and somewhere within you is looking for that. Jesus is that door to eternity.
Don't be afraid of acknowledging Him in public or else He will not acknowledge you before our God the Father. Love Him back because He loved us first. The cross is the proof.
It's like the zero point. Wherever you are in your life, no matter how far you are on the negative or positive side, you are still within His number line. No one is far from God's reach. Do not harden your heart. He is just waiting for you.
Don't be scared, I would love to help you with this new found faith my friend.
God increase and i decrease,
Gi
Is it intolerant of me if I say I hope everyone put their faith in Christ?
If we were all in a building and Someone tells you that it will collapse and everyone inside will die and the only way to live is to get out of the building, isn't it that warning people about what's about to happen is the most loving thing to do to save them?
If they don't believe the warning, then they did not only reject you but also the one who gave the warning in the first place. It's not ignorance that will destroy them but their unbelief.
“God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” - Acts 17:30-31
If all we need is LOVE, I pray that everything be expressed out of love. Love expressed through forgiveness, wisdom, patience, gentleness, rebuke, correction, discipline, kindness, goodness, joy, peace, self-control, selflessness, giving, and all those nice things that we know; not because we want to feel good about our own goodness but because we choose to love one another.
I pray that of all people in this earth, the so-called "Christians" would be the ones to show what love is- in action, more than words. Since they proclaim that the GOD who created the heaven and earth IS LOVE.
If all we need is love and God is love, then God is all we need. We love God in return through our obedience to Him, not being forced but out of love. There is never a qualified excuse to disobey God and say that we love Him. God is not mocked. What we reap is what we sow.
Fun Fact:
Of all creatures in this world, it's interesting to note that humans are the only ones who can read. It's like the Creator of humans Himself, hinting that the more we read and understand, the more we become who we are created to be.
Another Fact:
The Bible, composed of 66 books is the best-selling, epic book ever BUT only very few actually read it. The amount of energy we exert in understanding what the Bible says is equal to our desire to understand who God is. God, who out of love created all of us and never intends any harm for us.
You can only know my thoughts through my words. Jesus is the Living Word of God. We can only know who God is through Jesus. Without Jesus, there will be no understanding of who the real God is and we make god according to our own taste and that is called religion, man attempting to reach God. I pray this should not be because God revealed Himself through Jesus. We do not create our own truth. We just need to understand it, and my friend you will be set free from your clouded thinking if you follow Jesus.
To say that "you don't need God to do good" sounds to me like "the fruit can exist without the tree" or "there is a tree but it produces a different kind of fruit" which means "yes there is God but he is not good."
No one else is good but God.
Unbelievers do good things.
Yes that's true.
It is because humans are all created in God's image, unlike the other animals, we have moral accountability.
Now, doing good is not what will get us to where God wants us to be (Heaven). We all sinned and sin means death, separation from God.
We cannot buy our way back to God and so God reached out to us.
Man's attempt to please God is called religion.
God reaching out to man is called grace.
That is what exactly Jesus did when He became a man and suffered and died then resurrected for our sins. We can finally go back Home because our Lord paid the price for our sins.
Let this truth not depart from you my friends.
We are not given a lifetime to know the truth. We are instead given a lifetime to decide daily whether we follow the truth or not. To carry the cross or not to. Knowing the truth and not following it is futile and evil. We must submit to it.
You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even demons believe-and tremble! Do you know that faith without works is dead?
