Can a man be born a second time? Can a man live forever even though he dies? According to Jesus Christ the answer is YES. How is this possible? To answer the question succinctly, it involves complete and total surrender. The grace of God or what should be considered His unmerited favor, is not a cheap thing. A hefty price was paid for our sin. A second birth is necessary to finalize the deal.
2 Corinthians 5:17 New Living Translation (NLT) “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
In the Old Testament there were blood sacrifices that were offered by the High Priest once per year for the sins of God’s people Israel. EVERY year your sins had to be atoned for. Think of it like paying your taxes to the government each year. Same idea. To stay in God’s favor and under His blessing, you HAD to do that. According to God there has to be an atoning sacrifice to compensate for your sin. The blood from the sacrifice covered the sin. I liken it to having a piece of wood that is painted red, which is to represent sin. If you paint over it with white paint, you hide the red so that it can no longer be seen. It is still there underneath, but no longer visible. THAT is what the Old Testament blood sacrifices did for the person.
When you receive Christ and the salvation He offers, you get a package deal. Anything you have done in your past that is not pleasing to God is washed away. Picture a white board FILLED with various sundry markings, which are representative of our misdeeds and mistakes; our sins. The blood of Christ acts like a white board eraser, which when applied removes all sin. ALL sin. It is as if you have been born afresh and anew. Your heart is different, your mindset is different; you think differently; you see things differently. You begin to see things from a Godly perspective. Your heart is now towards the things of God and not arbitrary things that in the end have no lasting purpose or meaning.
Once you have received the grace and mercy of God in the form of your soul’s salvation, you must feed your new found relationship. If you just met a beautiful girl and you were instantly in love with her, you would want to know all you could about her and spend as much time with her as humanly possible, would you not?? Why should it be any different with God? Is it because you can’t SEE Him? Ah, but you feel His presence in your life through the Holy Spirit that came into you when you made the commitment to serve God. Go ahead and say I’m wrong. You know I’m not. I experienced having my sins forgiven nearly 34 years ago and I know what it feels like. For me there were no fireworks; no euphoric sensations. I just knew in my heart that I was different; that something had happened to me. I knew from that day forward my life would never be the same.
Satan cannot offer you anything remotely close to what God offers. He offers you temporal pleasures. He takes a load of garbage, wraps it in glittery paper, puts a bow on it and offers it to you in the form of sex, drugs, alcohol, marital affairs, anything you can think of that you THINK you must have to be happy. But it is a charade; it is all a deceptive façade. Only God can save, heal, and provide peace in the midst of life’s storms … only God. Satan causes disruption and chaos; God provides comfort and hope for tomorrow. Hey, it’s your choice. Choose life over death. Choose peace over chaos. I have walked with the Lord for over 30 years and I have never regretted my decision to follow Him once in all that time. NOT EVEN ONCE. He is the one constant in a sea of inconsistency. How can I not serve Him? He saved my life. And if you know Him, He saved yours too. Serve Him gladly and with unbridled joy.
WALK WITH THE KING TODAY AND BE A BLESSING!!
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