Will "But I Didn't Know Any Better" Be An Acceptable Excuse Before God On 'That Day'?

   When you were a child, did you ever want to do something, yet, you knew if you asked your mom or dad if it were ok for you to do that activity, they might say, 'no'?

  I played that game when I was a kid. I never wanted to risk hearing the words, 'no, you may not do that', so, I never asked. I thought that I could play ignorant if I got caught, and if what I were doing was wrong. That way, I wouldn't be charged with wrongdoing if I got caught or if something bad happened to someone else, or at least, so I thought I could plead ignorance and get away with my crime.

  Can we play that game with God, though? He sees right through our hearts and motives. Would He forgive us if we 'conveniently' didn't look at the rules or if we 'forgot' to seek Him on certain issues?

   Here is a summary of my thoughts on this:

* People like to play ignorant
* We are not ignorant of God
* Our ignorance of God will not excuse us on that Day

Today, people like to play 'ignorant'. If they hear the rules, they just 'ignore' them. Perhaps they were never taught the rules. In our society today, many have not even heard of the 10 Commandments. A large amount of people, for example, have no idea that God will judge those who are sexually immoral.

We really are not ignorant of God. At least, not as ignorant as we think we are. Deep down inside all of our hearts we do have a knowledge of God. We have an awareness of Him, and we do have some idea of the difference between right and wrong, and good and evil. We can deny this and turn to Atheism, if we want. But we are not going to be playing the game of ignorance on that Day.

Our ignorance of God will not excuse us on that Day. It is our responsibility to seek after God. The problem comes when God's will crosses our will. Who will win? Usually, we do. We are not really interested in hearing God's voice on anything. We believe the lie of the Enemy of our souls, who would tell us that if we seek after God and desire to know His thinking on something, that God will take all our fun away. God is not out to take our fun away. That is not the point of why God has boundaries.

Finally, here is what the Bible has to say on this. It comes from Romans 1:18-23  ESV

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

   You might have been able to fool your parents as a child, but God will never be fooled. We will all stand before Him on that Day, and none of us will be able to say that we didn't know better. 

For more information on how you can be made right before God, please go to http://thegospelconversation.blogspot.com

Freedom From Sin Or Freedom To Sin?

When Jesus died to pay for our sins, He also provided the way for us to be free from the entanglements of sin. But many see it differently.

Some think that Jesus came to set us free, but not from sin, but from the limitations that sin puts on us as well as from the consequences of sin. In the minds of some people, their understanding leads them to believe that we are free because the limitations or boundaries of sin around us are removed. But is this what the Bible teaches us?

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1,2 ESV)

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1,2 ESV)

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,  and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8: 31-36 ESV)

   So did Jesus die for us so we could do what we want, but without the boundaries and consequences? Like the verse above says, 'By no means'. 

   We live in a 'free' country. What does that mean though? Are we free to do whatever we want? Are the boundaries taken away so we can do anything that pleases us? What exactly are we free from?

   If you look down through History, you will see that it is extremely rare that people lived in countries that were 'free'. People did not elect kings. People had to do whatever the authorities said to do. That was how it was.

   Before our country came together, the king also presided over the church. There was a combination of royalty and clergy. No one could vote on this, whether they wanted to or not. There was no voting option. That is a big reason why our country got started in the first place.

   Throughout History, women did not have rights. Women, in many cultures even today, are considered like second class citizens. We have the privilege in America to vote. Voting is not only for white males either. Citizens who are of age can all vote. This is unheard of in most countries, at least the way it is carried out here.

   One reason people misunderstand freedom is because they feel 'entitled' to whatever they want or think they need. Freedom is costly for some. Think about the Cross. Jesus died on the Cross so that we could go free. It cost Him something, and He paid a grand price for our freedom. 

   There are boundaries with freedom too. We have freedom of religion in our country. But our freedom cannot violate someone else's freedom. For example, if our religion tells us to kill people who won't submit to our religion, then we cannot carry that action out. It would be like saying, 'I have rights but you don't, because your rights will end when I kill you, and I can kill you because we have freedom of religion here and my religion says I should kill you unless you submit to my religion."

   So the answer to the above question is, not freedom to sin, but freedom from sin. Sin traps us and is the weapon Satan uses to destroy us. We can't see all that is involved in sin, but we can see the affects of sin in the lives of many people, including ourselves, many times.

   We don't have freedom to sin, but we can be totally set free from the slavery of sin!

We so easily get tangled up in sin. Sin is a snare and will trap us

The Gospel, The Only Cure For All Our Evils In Our Society Today.

Have you noticed how many evil things are going on around us? There are angry people marching in different places. There are people getting killed because they are cops. An angry man surprises a class room and shoots everyone in the room. Name calling. Back-biting. And it's not only on the streets and in buildings. Even the church has been affected by this kind of evil.

We can talk about these issues all day long and we certainly can write about them in our blog posts, and we probably should, but, we could also become consumed and overwhelmed by the amount of evil that we see around us. We could talk about these situations the whole time we are awake until we go to bed. But is there a solution? Or better yet, is there some kind of preventive measure we can take that will help stop this evil momentum from continuing?

In David Wilkerson's book, The Cross And The Switchblade, Wilkerson talks about a situation he found himself in when he was new to New York City. As he was becoming acquainted with the gang members (whom they fondly called Wilkerson, Davey), he was realizing how serious the problem of heroin was becoming. When a person is addicted to heroin, it is hard to break that addiction and it will cost that person his or her life, at some point. Wilkerson studied the situation and learned the growing statistics of heroin addiction in New York City, and became overwhelmed and was ready to give up the call to 'help those boys' who were in the gangs on the streets of New York City and Brooklyn. But the Holy Spirit reminded him of an incident that happened when he was a young boy.

   There was a boy named 'Chuck' who was a bully. Wilkerson's family just moved into this town and the kids warned him of this bully named Chuck. Chuck was especially fond of picking on new kids in town and preacher's kids, of which Wilkerson was both. Wilkerson pondered this potential problem in his mind, and the verse 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts'. Well, the day came when the encounter with Chuck the bully met Wilkerson. Chuck poked fun at Wilkerson, and for a moment, Wilkerson forgot all about the Bible verse. After a couple of minutes of picking on Wilkerson, the verse came to his memory again. Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts. So, as the bully started in with bodily force, Wilkerson repeated the verse to himself. He continually reminded himself of what the Bible said. The bully then punched him but it didn't hurt. Then something really strange happened. The bully gave up and walked away. Not only that, but whatever happened from the bully's perspective, the bully looked at Wilkerson as some kind of fighter. In reality, God did the fighting for him.

The Cross And The
Switchblade - David
Wilkerson

   God will do the fighting for us. We have to follow His principles and it is of utmost importance, that we are filled with the Holy Spirit. We have to use the spiritual weapons as discussed in Ephesians 6 and other parts of Scripture.

  The reason we are in this situation with our country, to begin with, is that we dropped the ball when it comes to holding the things of God as precious. We began that process when we allowed a woman to go to the Supreme Court in the 1960s to take prayer out of our schools. Then the false idea of 'separation of church and state' came in as meaning that any governmental facility or association could not have Bibles or religious content in them. This is definitely not what our forefathers had in mind! As a result of all this, people are not familiar with the word of God. Americans today do not understand that the God who created us is holy and has standards. We don't know what His standards are because they have not been taught to us. Some of us older people know, but many do not treasure God's word and have not stored it in their hearts, and as a result, it never got passed down to the next generation.

   I think we have a weak view of who God is, in our churches today. Could that be the reason why only 2% of those who are members of Christian churches do the work of evangelism? If we genuinely had an encounter with the true and living God, would we still continue to live self-centered lives like so many of us do today? If we understood the grace of God, and what a debt we owe because of our sin, would we be indifferent about sharing the Gospel message with others?

   The Gospel will bring light to a darkened world. God is light. The god of this world is Satan. He masquerades as an 'angel of light' but is really and angel of death and works in deception. Could it be that if we preach the Gospel message, people will be reconciled to God, will have a new heart, and will help society to experience more light, and with this light, expel much of the darkness that is here?

  Can we bring back the 'fear of the Lord' again? Can we bring to people the knowledge that, the works they do in secret will be known by God? God will expose everything, one day. But if we know God is watching and keeping record, maybe we will think twice about our actions and the decisions that we make every day. Maybe we will be able to look at our selfish hearts and exchange them for a new heart that loves God and people. Maybe society will look different and people will be able to see God for the first time. Maybe many will come to know the Lord and experience healing here, and eternal life forever.

(For a good course in learning to do evangelism, please go to the link for the Proclaim Course - http://www.proclaim.typepad.com/proclaim/
Also, Living Waters has some excellent videos, audios, courses and tracts. Visit them at http://www.livingwaters.com).

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God Holds All The Atoms In The Universe Together

Here is a pic of what an atom looks like.


CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=295612

Atoms are very small. Imagine all the atoms around us and in us. Imagine all the atoms in the Universe. God knows each one and He holds everything together.

Here is what the Bible says about Jesus:
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."*

So, according to those verses, Jesus is holding everything together. A person might be proud of his or her accomplishments or who he or she is, but the person is not really the one holding himself together. Every breath that we have comes from God. He gave us our first breath and will give us our last breath. 

Atheists, like everyone else, die. We are all appointed to die one day. After we die, we will face God in judgment. We will face the One who holds everything together and give account of our lives. Will we be found in Him, or will we be covered in our sin and shame?

For more information on this subject of where we will spend eternity, please go to http://thegospelconversation.blogspot.com

* Colossians 1: 15-17 ESV