A New Start

Is this life beating you up? Are you tired of the constant struggle just to keep your head above water? Is life just a major disappointment and not turning out like you had hoped it would? Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Then you're in the same place I use to be.

If you're like me then you just experience one let down after another. Nothing ever seemed to go your way. You try to be positive, but it's so hard when you have nothing to be positive about. You're always bored and life is a continuous effort just to keep moving in order to find something to keep boredom from setting in. Sadness, loneliness and bitterness are your only steady companions you can count on. There is a big empty hole in you that you just can't seem to fill. Relationships with others can't fill it. All the pleasures that this life affords, seem to be only temporal and never truly satisfy. You're looking for something else and you can't for the life of you figure out what that is! If that describes you, then I totally know where your coming from. Most of my life I spent walking into that wall over and over again, and the emptiness and misery of this life just kept growing.

Maybe you've tried religion and that didn't satisfy. You even became a member of a local congregation and got baptized. Nothing changed. Maybe you've been to see a psychiatrist or a councilor which made you feel better for a bit, but that overpowering feeling of emptiness keeps coming back. It seems no matter what you do, or how many anti-depressants you take, it can't fix what is ailing you. What you need is relief from all that guilt that is built up inside of you. What you need is a clean slate. A fresh start. You need forgiveness and love. You need a new outlook on life. You don't need a patch up job. You don't need soul maintenance. You need an end to the old life. You need a brand new life. You need a relationship with your Creator. A psychiatrist or a councilor can't give you that. A pastor or a priest can't give you that. Religion offers nothing of the sort. No belief system, no set of rules or principles, and no religious activity can give what you need.

Here is some good news for you! All your guilt is unnecessary. You've been carrying it around when there is no need to! God sent His Son into this world to die for your sins, which He did. Jesus became your sin and died on a cross, so you could become His righteousness and live. He came to be your mediator and to make peace with God for you. He suffered and died so that you could live! He took your place in hell so you could take His place in heaven. He took the punishment that should have been yours, so you could take the benefits of His overcoming life. The good news isn't finished yet. Then God raised Him from the dead and seated Jesus, the only overcoming Man on His right Hand. Your sins have been paid for. Peace with God has been made!

So how do you access this great salvation? Just believe it. It's a FREE GIFT. God promises that if you simply turn to Him and believe this message, He'll immerse you into His Son, Jesus. He'll place you as a part of His body, of His flesh and of His bone. That's right. He will join you to Christ so that you are inseparable from Him. His life becomes your life. His history becomes your history. His righteousness becomes your righteousness. That way, whatever happens to Him, happens to you. Whatever Christ inherits, you'll inherit. This way you'll know your saved. You won't have to rely on your measly works to get right with God. You won't have to rely on your religious effort and getting your soul right because, Jesus already got right for you! You'll get right with God because of what Jesus did!

If you believe this, then God has saved your soul and you have a brand new life. You are now a member of different race of people with Jesus as the head. Your old man is crucified, dead and buried. You're old life is a thing of the past. Your brand new life in Christ is filled with joy, peace and love. You have everything to look forward to now. You have an inheritance that won't fade away. You have an all powerful God who loves you and has your best interests at heart. You've been forgiven of all your trespasses and entered into a relationship of faith with God. This is great! As God's love changes you, you will experience a growing, maturing and a loving relationship with your heavenly Father that will satisfy all the deep longings of your soul. Everything is different now. You have eternity to look forward to. Nothing will ever be the same. Your entire outlook on life is different. You truly are a new creature. Amazing!

A Person Driven Life

Much of what is goes for Christianity these days is merely self help program. Nearly every sermon preached from the pulpit pertains to improving self, how to live a purpose driven life, and how to live your best life now. Watch religious tv and see if it is not so. You got your Osteen's and Schuller's spewing out the same self absorbed garbage that got humanity into the mess we're in. Go to a christian book store and start looking at the shelves. Most of the books are about how to improve yourself and your life. It's all about how to think positively and feel really good about yourself. It's sick folks. Almost everything taught from the pulpit and media today is just plain humanism with feel good message attached. There's no gospel to be found.

True Christianity is not about us and how to live our best life now. Christianity is not about becoming something we're not. Christianity is Christ. It's about a living breathing Person. It's about the second Man, the last Adam. It's about the Son of God who came into this world to die in order to save a whole race full of losers. It's about God revealing Himself to this lost world in the likeness of sinful flesh to save us from our sins. It's all about Jesus. We've gotten lost in ourselves and it's time to refocus on Christ. We need to start looking at the big picture. We need a new paradigm to view the world through and it must be in through the framework of God's eternal program.

We have become lost in our own little denominational kingdoms and we need to get back to the Kingdom of God. This self love, self righteous, self sanctification, self absorbed mentality must go. It is not biblical. The Christian life is not becoming something we are not. It is becoming something that God says we already are. I don't know if you've noticed but in the bible it continuously says "In Christ". Apart from Christ we are nothing, but in Christ we are complete. The only struggle we have then is believing God and taking hold of that which we already have, in Christ.

What my main point is though is this... Christ is everything. He is the Head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the end. He is life itself. He is the truth. He is the way. He is the power and grace of God. In Him all things consist. He is the glue that holds everything in the universe together. Shouldn't He be our focus? We have a risen Saviour who was dead and is alive for evermore and He lives in us! We ought not live by principles, rules, and humanism. We ought not live for ourselves. We ought to live by faith in Him who loved us and gave himself for us. We should have a person driven life not a purpose driven life. That person is Jesus. He's the author and finisher of our faith. He is our life. To ignore Him is to ignore all purpose and all meaning. We need to be consumed with Jesus. In him we live and breath and have our being.