Welcome to the most important part of my blog: getting right with God if you have never had a right relationship with God.
(If you’re one who has gone to church a lot and know all about church culture and “church talk,” but you got off track in your relationship with God, you’re in a slightly different category. You know Jesus still loves you. I’ll have a page for you later.)
It’s easy, but hard, to get right with God, my friend.
The easy part is that the Bible teaches that God loved the world—including you—so much that He actually died for you, died for your sins; read John 3:16. He loves you. Really.
By the way and in case you don’t know, “sin” is not just bad things that we have done. It’s good things we have left undone. It’s being imperfectly human. It’s making decisions that go against the character and heart of God. It’s rebellion against God, both active and passive. It’s resisting His rule over your life. And it’s all this in every area of our lives—thoughts, attitudes, motives, words, actions, habits, identities, and values. You probably know by now that you are a sinner and that you have sinned or you wouldn’t be reading this.
So… Either you pay for your sins, or someone else does.
According to the Bible, only someone who has never sinned and has never been guilty could take your place and pay for your sins, or he’d have to pay for his own. Know anyone like that? Me, either. No one in the history of the world was like that, except for Jesus.
Nothing else can pay for our sins: not church membership, not church attendance, not being a good citizen, not being a good person, not being altruistic and serving the public, not being related to anyone in a religious community. God has no grandchildren.
Here comes the hard part: the only way to get right with the One True God is to personally receive into your heart and life—to ask for—His forgiveness of your sinful condition and accept what He did as payment for your sins. That’s it. Doesn’t it feel kind of funny? It does hurt your pride that you’re not good enough and you think you don’t need Jesus. But we all do.
It’s really hard to think of Someone loving you personally, intimately, and so strongly, that He would die a brutal, tortured, and bloody death for your wrongs. That’s a horrible concept even if you’re in the military and you’re surrounded by death and destruction every day.
It’s kind of like if you commit a huge crime and you’re standing before the judge, and he hands you down a harsh, but well-deserved sentence. How would you feel if he turns around and carries out your sentence on your behalf?
My dear friend, if you have never had a relationship with God and you want one, good. He wants a real relationship with you, too! In fact, He’s been waiting for you to find Him.
So, what you do is tell Him all this. Tell Him you know you’re a sinner, that you have sinned against Him, and you know you deserve hell. Tell Him you’re sorry for sinning against Him, and that you surrender. Ask Him to forgive you, and to come into your heart and your life. Thank Him for dying for you and for your sins. Tell Him you want to follow Him for the rest of your life. And ask Him to make you into the man or woman He wants you to be.
Go on, now. Get over there! He’s waiting with the biggest smile to welcome you home. Just start talking to Him. That’s what we call prayer, “asking Jesus into your heart and life.”
If you asked Jesus into your heart and life, I would love to hear about it. I would love to pray for you and share some very basic next steps as a new follower of Christ. Please be sure to contact me and let me know that you have, either on this blog page or through my FaceBook page, “One is a Whole Number.”
God bless you on your journey.
