Skip the Regrets and Forge Forward in Faith in 2018

"What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous?  Job 15:14

I am but a silly sheep in the great I AM 's  overflowing pasture, and I lose my way all the time. He rescues me daily from my own bad decisions and keeps me in life. (Psalm 66:9) Yet the Bible says I am pure if I am washed in the blood of the Lamb. I am without spot and blameless. I share in Christ's very righteousness.

"Yes, but....!" I've said in my heart a million times. My own heart wants to readily condemn me. The voice in my heart demands to be heard. Yet God is far greater than that voice...

For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. I John 3:21

 At certain times, like at night when I toss and turn, the thoughts of what I should have done and could have done come back to nip at my conscience. Finally, I am able to put the day into the wastebasket and He gives me rest.

The trouble is I know what is in my heart. I know that I fall short of God's righteous requirements. And Jesus does too.He knows I can never clean up the mess within my own heart. But somehow He still loves me, not because of anything desirable in me, but because of who and what He is. There is nothing in Him less than absolute love and perfection. He knows that if I spent the next billion years trying in my flesh to be like Him I would never produce even one good thing.

So He waits. He wants only for me to trust Him. He alone will produce anything good that comes from me by His grace. After all these years of walking with the Lord, I  only see more of my failures. That's a good thing, though. It's good to be weakened, to be reminded that I am only made of dust, so that I look only to my Perfect Savior. He too was made of dust, but now is in an incorruptible body that has triumphed for once and all over sins and failures and death.

Thank God, this Perfect Savior does not see me the way I see myself. I say in my heart, "But Lord, remember the time I did this, or though that, or didn't do what I thought You wanted me to?"

But that's ridiculous to entertain that, for He tells us:

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Heb. 8: 12

If I believe the Bible, I must cast these thoughts off as vain imaginations. These feelings of guilt and regret do not make me more valuable or pious to God. They only serve to prove that my eyes are on myself and not on the Finished Work sacrifice that He made, once for all.

If He said it was finished, it was finished. No matter how bad I botch things, my sins, past, present and future have all been a part of what we could call Job's bag and thrown on Christ, once for all.

"My transgression is sealed up in a bag, And You wrap up my iniquity." Job 14:15

In the updated 1992 version of Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest today,  it gently and kindly reminded me, when once again I was ready to beat myself up for falling short that it is about looking ahead, not looking behind, as we reach this last day of the year 2017.

 "It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return...Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him." 

The Exclusivity of Christianity

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.

This was and is the core belief of Christians throughout the ages. Believers living in the centuries before us demonstrated great faith as they spread the Gospel across the world. I am amazed at what great faith of men such as William Carey, Charles Spurgeon and Oswald Chambers could accomplish. Do we believe the Bible as they did?

Has the Bible changed? No, not in the original autographs. But modern man can change the Word to fit his own likings, because man is more savvy than the old fashioned God we always believed in. For instance, there are Bibles available for those want God to not be referred to exclusively in the male gender, but either a He or a She. I don't get that. It says what it says. In the days of William Tyndale, just to get a Bible was a treasure. They printed it as it was translated, and did not apologize for hurting people's feelings, not even the King of England's. I wonder what William Tyndale would have thought about all our modern Bibles today, and how they cater to people's sensibilities.

I thought that all Christians believed in the necessary atoning work of Christ upon the cross. But now, there are other more "popular" fads that are in trend. Popular teachers write books that make these beliefs attractive, because it appears to comfort people from thinking about the reality of hell. One of them is Universalism. That is the belief that somehow, all in the end will be saved, no matter if they believed in Christ or not.
I ask you, why then did Jesus come down and suffer upon a bloody cross for us if all will be saved in the end regardless? Christ did not force us to believe on Him. It is our choice. He paid for all sins on the cross, yet there still is one sin that will keep people out of heaven. That is the refusal to believe on Him personally as Savior. Jesus is not just any old god, He is the One True God. I don't have to argue with that, just accept it on faith.

Deuteronomy 4:39: "Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other." I wrote this verse in calligraphy many years ago and hung it in my kitchen for all of our eyes to see, including my children's. What an onslaught awaited them in the world. Children raised in Christian homes are abandoning their faith even more so today.

Jesus told the Pharisee Nicodemus, who came to Him at night: "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3) Jesus never said there were other ways to come to the Father, a notion that is believed by man. No, there is only ONE Savior and One way to heaven.

1 Timothy 2:5: "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus."

Now that is exclusive, and many turn away at this point. You cannot add Jesus + other ways to heaven. Other cultures did not have the Judeo Christian heritage as we did, but yet Christianity still spreads like wildfire to them who have never heard. Even as we turn away from it, they embrace it.

People who never heard of Jesus before discover that when they cry out to these gods, they do not get an answer, just like the prophets of Baal with Elijah's challenge to the false prophets in I Kings 18:21. He ends up asking the universal question: "How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people answered him not a word.

I Kings 18: 25-29 continues, "Now Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one bull for yourselves and prepare it first, for you are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under it." So they took the bull which was given them, and they prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even till noon, saying, "O Baal, hear us!" But there was no voice; no one answered. Then they leaped about the altar which they had made. And so it was, at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, "Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened." So they cried aloud, and cut themselves, as was their custom, with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. And when midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice. But there was no voice; no one answered, no one paid attention."

Do you see? No answer. But when Elijah prayed, God immediately answered Elijah and consumed his sacrifice with fire from heaven.(I Kings 18:38) Only the True God heard and answered. Do we believe the exclusive claims of Christ, or are there other ways to get to heaven as well? Has "another faith," and "another Jesus" crept in unaware?

II Corinthians 11: 3-4: But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted--you may well put up with it!"

The power of the gospel lies in it's simplicity. Simple for us, because it was very difficult for Him.

John 6: 28-9: Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."