What do you believe?

What do you believe?

A local newspaper here recently asked for people of the community to send in an essay of 500-750 words for possible printing in the weekly religion section of the newspaper. The topic of the essay was to be first person, what you believe, why you believe it, and how it applies to your life. First off I think it is very daring, specially in these politically correct times that we live in, to actually even ask for this type of information. Heaven forbid if we actually say why we believe in something, after all it might go against somebody else and start a riot across the world. Don't worry there are no cartoons in this article. :)

Of course I couldn't just let an opportunity such as this go by so I wrote up and sent in my article. Originally it was somewhere near a thousand words (just a little over the limit) so I had to cut it back a bit. As I look back over it I would be shocked if it got printed, so I thought "It is just way to good to never get viewed" so here it is for you to review and comment on.

"If you were to take a look at me I am sure there is nothing that would outwardly distinguish me as a Christian. Inwardly however I am a new creation in Jesus Christ and born again of the Spirit of God.

I knew I had to be born again, as it says in John 3:3, when I started to look at myself in God's law, the Ten Commandments. Instead of using them as a standard to live by however I used them, as God does, to judge myself. Had I ever lied? Of course I had and I knew in my heart what that made me, a liar. Had I ever stolen anything? Well nothing big of course, after all I hadn't robbed a bank or anything. As I looked at it more closely however I discovered that the value didn't matter, if I had taken $1 or $100 from a wallet I had still stolen something from someone. When I applied that to my life and how I acted I realized that I had stolen things, which invariably made me a thief. Had I ever taken God's name in vain? Yes, I had many times used His Name, the very name of God that gave me life, as just punctuation to a sentence or a cuss word and that then made me a blasphemer. As I looked at these I realized I was a lying, blaspheming, thief at heart and I still had seven other commandments to go! I realized that my breaking of the Commandments, or His law, was sin as it states in 1 John 3:4. I came to realize that I had fallen short of God's standard as it states in Romans 3:23 and I was guilty. If I was guilty then the next question would be would I go to heaven or would I go to hell?

I tried to console myself that God was loving, and kind, and merciful. As I kept reading the bible I came to learn that God does have another side as well though, a side that is holy, righteous, and demands justice. I knew that if God were to judge me by His law I would be guilty and that in order for His perfect justice to be carried out I would have to go to hell for eternity. Just being sorry wouldn't be enough, if I stood in a civil courtroom after stealing something and told the judge "I'm sorry" he wouldn't just let me off. The sentence would need to be carried out or a fine would be paid.

What if however someone did pay my fine? A large fine it was in God's eyes for breaking His eternal law, who could pay such a large fine and satisfy God's requirement on my behalf? I then found the loving, kind, and merciful side of God in the giving of His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the fines for my sin as stated in John 3:16. Jesus Christ paid the fine for me at the Cross. Now that was what He did but was their anything I needed to do? The answer was yes, I had to accept the payment on my behalf by claiming it and by turning away from my lawlessness and instead serve the one who gave Himself for me, in common terms, I needed to repent. I needed to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ just as someone trusts a parachute on a plane that they knew was going down. It simply was not enough to know that Jesus Christ could save me but, like a parachute, I needed to put Him on and get ready for the ultimate jump, death. I needed to follow and trust Him. I needed to be born again of the Spirit.

So how does this show in my life today? I am not the man I once was, the things of this world that once enticed such as money, material things, etc mean nothing. I spend my free time on the streets of Syracuse ministering to people by telling them the Good News otherwise known as the Gospel. To show them they to have fallen short of God's standard and to prepare for the final jump that must come to each and every one of us by trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one who can pay our fine."