WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
In the beginning, God was alone, because He always was, and always will be. No time existed…only endless back, and endless forward. This is impossible for us to understand, because we are limited. Try to think endless back….you’ll always come to some end….
No matter how far back, its farther back still…..we can’t imagine or
understand that.
Same with endless forward…..keep going, and going, and going, and it will never end….Our minds were made within time. Everything that we know of has had a beginning and will have an end. God is the only entity without boundaries.
Without boundaries…there’s another one to try to grasp. Everything has a boundary in this world….in our imaginations. Boundaries are like beginnings and endings….they are everywhere.
Since God has no boundary, and the Word says, that God is love… (1John 4:8), then Love has no boundaries, and is everlasting, just like God. The Word also says many times that God’s Love for us is so great….in fact, we can’t escape it if we wanted to.
Read the following verses and think about the words:
Romans 8:38 &39
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor Principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The Book of Genesis tells us that we are created in His image…..
(the image of the Trinity…Father, Son and Holy Spirit)
and He breathed His breath of life into Adam’s nostrils.
OHHHH…to think of feeling the breath of the Eternal and all Mighty God!!!!
Adam walked with God……He knew God in a different way than we do. We yearn to walk with God in the cool of the day, as the Bible says Adam did, but, We have an advantage Adam did not have.
We can have God IN US, and Adam never could. Adam had to wait for God to find him, and he wasn’t always with Him. But, having offered us Himself, which is Love, we have God with us every moment of our Christian lives. OHHHH what a thought that is!!!! We need not ever be alone again….nothing can separate us from the Love of God, because He can be within our spirits.
When God created man, he created us with three parts, Spirit, Mind and Body.
The mind is our brain, emotions, desires, and temperament.
Our body is our physical body, and our spirit is that part of us that
Will live forever….either in hell, or in heaven. Our spirits are eternal, because God breathed into Man at creation. We weren’t always in existence in the past, but we will be in existence forever in the future.
But, now, the question is this: WHERE do you want to exist forever?
The Bible says that those who die without accepting Jesus Christ as their saviour will spend eternity in hell, with the devil and his angels, while those who accepted Jesus Christ will live forever with Him.
Remember, I said that God is without boundaries? Actually, there is one exception to that. He chose to put boundaries around Himself in one area. It was His choice, that He made out of the Love that makes up His being.
He chose not to go against your will. He gives all human beings free choice. We are free to choose our eternal home.
If we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, then He enters our spirits and becomes an intimate part of our lives. Therefore, we will spend eternity with Him. We cannot go to hell because God and His Love cannot exist there, and they are already within our spirits after Salvation.
But, those who haven’t submitted their lives to Christ are ignoring His invitation, and that is their free choice. He will try to make them understand. The Holy Spirit will try to convince them, and send Christians to try to show them, but, in the end, if they choose not to make that decision, God doesn’t punish them. He gave them free choice. If he punished them for that choice, He would be a hypocrit, and since He is perfectly good, that can’t be true.
It grieves Him so greatly…..We can feel a small part of that grief (a small part because we are finite) when we see people refuse His Great Love for them. But, even with the tremendous pain He feels, He can do nothing for them. He loves people so much that He has put a boundary around Himself which pains Him more than we will ever know, but He cannot go beyond that boundary.
So, without Jesus Christ in their spirits, they cannot enter heaven, because they have rejected Him, and in so doing,
they have lost their capacity to embrace Him, and being with Him would be painful for them, for they will realize their mistake,
and the pain would be too much for them.
This is what the demons feel. Before Creation, Satan rebelled against God because he was envious and prideful, and wanted the worship that was given to God. Satan and his demons cannot stand to hear people praising God, and our weapons against them are God’s Word, and praise. They also know they made a mistake, but it is too late. Hatred and sin have taken over and they cannot go back. Any created creature is imperfect, and where there is imperfection, there is a chance for evil.
We all sin…..the Word says that no one is good. (see below)
Psalm 14:3 “they are all gone aside, they are all together filthy. There is none that doeth good, no not one.”
Psalm 53:2-4 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one.”
See also, the whole chapter of Romans 3
We need to compare ourselves to God, not to other people. When we do that, we see that we are filthy.
There is no hope for any of us to enter the Throne Room of Almighty God on our own!!!! We are so far from that!!!
Without Jesus in our Hearts and the Holy Spirit in us, that would be our fate for eternity, but with the indwelling Spirit, we have God and God cannot deny Himself.
2Timothy 2:13 ‘If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.
Just as God willingly put Himself inside boundaries to give us free choice, He also put Himself inside boundaries to bring imperfect creatures to a perfect place because He is in them!!!!!
Our home is with our indwelling Saviour after we’re saved, and the unsaved have made their choice to live without Him. He doesn’t “put” them in hell, it is the natural course of things….of imperfect creatures without the infinite Love within them.
As finite creatures, we will continue to sin, but the beauty of our Salvation is that we can have constant communication with our Saviour and our Creator anytime we want!!!!
So, the minute we sin, or as soon as possible after, we need to confess that sin, and thank Him for the forgiveness He always gives, but He also gives us the grace to overcome the temptation to sin.
He will change our hearts in time. The more time we spend in His presence, the more we will change to be like Him.
Even if we are “wrapped up tight” He can and will get through our hard core IF we genuinely want Him to.
Therein is the false thinking, especially in our society today. A lot of people think they are saved because they attended a rally, church service, or TV service where they repeated a prayer someone said.
This is a beginning, but it doesn’t get you saved.
Those are just words. No one but God and you know what your heart really feels after and during those words.
You can be saved with no words, and you can be saved without knowing Scripture at all. That’s what’s so beautiful about Our Lord. He knows our hearts and minds even before we’re saved.
He knew us before we were born, and He loved us then. Its His desire that every person be saved and live with Him, and that’s why His heart is so broken when some chose the other path.
The real test of sincerity is our lives AFTER the prayer. A true Christian changes his whole attitude after salvation. Whereas before, he was seeking his own happiness, and that of his family, now he seeks and yearns for only the will of God.
As God works in our hearts, we are consumed with Him and His will for us and our loved ones. He will bring us to the point where He is The All in All, and we see our loved ones from the eternal prospective, and would want God’s will for them even if it causes them pain in this life. This life is temporary, but eternity with Our Saviour is forever.
We should be speaking in our hearts and minds (while developing our spirits) to God every chance we get, and when we can’t, our spirits are communicating with the Holy Spirit, so when Paul says to pray unceasingly, he means it. We really can.
We should be constantly aware of God’s presence inside and outside of us, and walk with Him….We will grow to “see” His loving face smiling at us as we go about our tasks, and know that He will bring growth to our faith and change us into what He wants us to be.
A Christian has a one track mind, and everything else is on the sideline.