Runaway from Religion: Running in the right direction ... into the loving arms of Jesus (God)!

[Philippians 3:7-9]

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law (doing good), but that which is through faith in Christ -- the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith"

Do you know God? Do you know Christ Jesus as Lord and Friend?
There's a difference between "knowing about God" and "knowing God".
Knowing "about" God is relatively factual, a spectators view none the less. It places God in a bubble that seems impossible to touch, understand, or ever experience beyond knowing black from white. Knowing "about" God is perhaps just as destructive as not "knowing" God at all, because both roads lead to the same hopeless end. No Jesus, No Peace, No Salvation!

In contrast, "Knowing God" goes beyond knowing factual characteristics, promises, and purposes of God to a scope that is personally experiential and powerfully transformational. Knowing God, is in essence, to know ones identity and purpose beyond a humans ability to determine, let alone comprehend.

God reveals himself for one purpose and only one purpose:

For Us To "Know Him"!

Anyone can "know about God", but only a chosen lot of people ever really get to "know God" through an intimate, personal and loving relationship with Him. Having many friends come and gone through the days of our lives, we realize that some stay and most go but all friends eventually "fail" us at some point-in-time or in some way. The truth is people fail yet there is only One Love that never fails, a Friend who remains faithfully by our side to the very end: God; He is an exception to the 'rule of Friend'!

Everyone "knows about God"! Heck, Even the darkest, most evil forces know about (of) God, yet knowing God is the only way for our lives to ever have true peace, true direction, and true redemption. Many will tell you that many roads lead to the same ends, but Jesus Christ contradicts the "ways of the wise" that is World Religions. Jesus Christ is not a religion. Jesus Christ is the Way. Not one way among many, but the only way. He is not "a means" to the ends but rather He is The Means and The Ends ...

Knowing God is not possible without knowing Jesus Christ ... (The Jesus Factor...)!!

Either Jesus is (1). the Truth or (2). A liar ... No gray area. As for me He remains my hope for existence, my love and life, and most importantly ... The Lord of My Life ...

I. The Jesus Factor:

(a). Jesus is the Only Way to "Know God" --

• "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Mt 11:27)
• "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him ... (Jn 6:44)
• "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, No one comes to the Father (God) except through me (Jesus)" (Jn 14:6)

(b). Jesus is God, God the Son, God in Flesh; To Know Jesus is to know God -

• "If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him" (Jn 14:7)
• "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. WE have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:1-3,14)
• " I tell you the truth before Abraham was born, I AM!" - (Jn 8:58)
• "I and the Father are one." - (Jn 10:30)

(c). To Know God - is only by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, to have Life in his name -

• "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (Jn 20:30-31)
• "Yet to all who receive him (Jesus), to those who believed in his name (Jesus), he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God!" (Jn 1:12-13).

(d). The Bible = Supernatural book whose ultimate author is God working through men.

The Bible is about God and You; It's all about Jesus!

The Bible is the means by which we "know" existentially how God's story is now our story. It is the mirror that reflects who we are In Christ and the Life we have in his name.

• "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets he (Jesus) explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:27)
• "All of scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16)
• "For the Word of God is living and active ... penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13).

II. Bringing it Home:

How does what I'm saying and what God is doing meet you where you need to be met?

Here's the truth: All have sinned and fall short of the perfection that God requires of anyone who desires to live in him and with him. God is perfect, in Him there is no sin, no evil, only perfection. Sin has created death and death is what awaits all of us. Everyone needs victory from their own sin, from their inevitable death, and really from themselves. Although, we cannot achieve, earn, and reconcile this level of perfection by our own doing ... God has made a way! The way that all sinners can be considered perfect is through a sacrifice and a atonement for sin that fulfills the perfection that I could not (that we could not). This sacrifice was God's life for my own . He came down to earth, fully God yet fully me (man), to live his life sinless unto death so that by taking the punishment for my sins and all his children (which is through the shedding of God's blood - the blood of Christ - unto death), that all wrong would be made right, that Good would "once and for all" overcome Evil, and that The Way shall be forever paved into the history of time ... so that God could reconcile all sinners unto himself through Jesus Christ -- that whoever shall believe, shall be redeemed and born again ... dying physically (yes) but being reborn spiritually, forever being counted as righteous and as God's Children!! :)

This is Your Story ... It's either you place your faith in Jesus Christ ... Or You Don't ... either way you must make a choice...

As for me ... Praise Jesus Christ forever that He drew me to himself and showed me this Love that is better than life!! I placed my faith in him 3 years ago on Easter 07'! I know that my sins are forgiven and I will forever live with Him and in Him (in Heaven). Driven by this faith in Christ, comforted by his love and walking on this path that shines an endless hope... I travel onward to my home in heaven.

Friends, I know who I am and I know why I am here ... I belong to Jesus Christ ... I'm one of God's Children ... and my purpose is to Love Like Jesus knowing that by sharing the Love of Christ that God is bringing to himself a family that once was broken by Evil, but now has been forever Redeemed and Reconciled by His Love....

This Love Is For You ... A Love gifted by the Redeemer of Your Soul ... By Faith in Jesus Christ!

Are you his Child? Do you want to know Jesus Christ as Lord?

I count everything else in my life as loss, for in Christ I have everything and through His love I can do all things!!

He can meet you wherever you are at in your life. He is the Hope for the helpless, the Rest for the weary, the Love for the broken heart ... He is Grace and Forgiveness, Mercy and Healing ... and He'll meet you wherever you are ... just cry out to Jesus!

I'm going to heaven because of Jesus Christ (100% certainty) and I pray that I will see you there ;)

The Light at the end of Your Tunnel: 'man's way leads to hopeless end, God's way leads to endless Hope'

"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul?
(Matthew 16:26)

Having recently attended a funeral for my Grandfather, it's unique what happens within our mind, our heart, and our soul when someone we love dies. It's almost like a "reality check". It is as though in those moments we forget about the pleasureful non-sense, the itch within that drives what we do and why we do, and in turn stop to reflect on yesterday, today, and tomorrow, coming to the realization that one day "I will surely breath my last breath". Funerals are a blessing in the sense that it brings to light the most important aspects of life that we often neglect, run from, and increasingly suppress. Considerations such as "what I am living for?", "Where is this path I am traveling on leading me?", "What is my hope for living - both now and after inevitable death", "Why am I here?"; questions - I believe - that all men and woman have to face at some point in their life (which oddly enough is usually when "what we hold as reality" gets flipped upside down and we are left in a helpless, broken state of realization that I can do nothing to change what has happened and what is happening, we discover that what remains is the epiphany of truth: I am not the master of my "known" universe).

What happens next is a travesty and perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all: the Funeral ends, the epiphany fades, and we go back to "living life", driven by the shifting modes of a pleasure-seeking heart, traveling down the same path and the same tunnel that I call "my way" ... the highway whose tunnel is continually dark (sinfully confusing) and whose shadow's distract us whenever we drive by, and begin to consider, the sign's that say "no outlet", "dead end", "wrong way". Yet we don't take the leap of faith and we continue driving faster and faster past the "U Turn" exit that offers any hope of redemption and direction toward light. The greatest tragedy of all is that so many of God's creation proceed down "their way", a way without God driven by their own pursuit for happiness, understanding of knowledge, and deceitfulness of heart (pride) that does not lead to an endless hope, but rather to a hopeless end (a way with no light ... at the end of the tunnel).

So the question is: How does what I'm saying apply to you? What is important to consider and what practicality applies to your life and your circumstance, right? That is the "Big", "most important question"!

First 'food for thought' - What is your purpose for living? In what direction does 'your life's purpose' have you traveling and is their a light of Hope at the end of that tunnel??

We spend our lives working -- for relationships, for position, for status, for acceptance, for meaning (achievement), for pleasure -- but to what ends does this "work-driven" life take us?

Within the bible, only one man ever got to receive somewhat of a "genie-wish" from God ... his name was Solomon. Solomon asked for the gift of Wisdom ... wisdom he desired to rule over and serve his people justly. Perhaps the riches man who ever lived, Solomon had everything. He had power, he had status, he had monuments, he had many homes (vacation homes even), he had many wives, cattle, and slaves ... heck he even had "girls" on call just for him (intimacy with females beyond measure), and on top of all this ... he was knowledgeable ... he was "wise". Yet listen to his reflection of his "pleasure-driven", "wisdom centered" lifestyle when it came to reflecting on his life ... he said [Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, 22-26]

"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labor. 11Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. 22What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. 24 A mans can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

Notice that Solomon concludes that "apart from God their can be no satisfaction in anything we "toil to do", because apart from there being a good and gracious God, there is no hope!"**

God makes everything we do meaningless for this reason alone: Realization that there's a greater meaning and purpose to our lives that we cannot achieve. So that we will need him to provide the huge gap in our relationship to him and with him caused by the Sin in our life. I believe that God desired to reveal to us that "we" cannot save ourselves and it's not what we do that please God, but who we are (either we ARE His in Christ or we ARE NOT -our own sinful rejection and pride to "hope in me"). (Ps 89:48).

Concluding on this note: "This world and the desires of my deceitful heart will eventually pass away ... but the man who does the will of God lives forever" (1 John 2:19, Jeremiah 17:9).

The Fork in The Road: What is the will of God?? What is the Light at the end of your tunnel? How can you stop drifting and start living purposefully, labor that is not in vain?

"35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and their is the right way (God's way) that leads to endless hope ...
This way can no be paved by your own doing, but by God's doing ...
God is doing a work in your heart right now and he is calling you to himself.
If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour ... all you have to do is acknowledge that you have sinned, that you need 'a way' to forgive those sins and repenting of what's behind you, you make a choice to place your faith and hope for heaven in a person, the Son of God, Jesus Christ ... who died for your sins, but more importantly was resurrected to intercede on your behalf in heaven ... becoming a living God who walks with you, who lives literally 'to love you'. If you have decided to place your hope in Jesus, you can know that God has given you his Spirit to guide you and love you today unto forever. You can know that no matter what ... you will be in heaven ... not because of what "good" you have done", but because Jesus lived, died, and was raised for you ... and there is nothing that can separate you from his love after your moment of faith, not even yourself ... no future sin, doubt, or faithlessness.

Be washed in the blood of Jesus ... and start living out your destiny ... traveling down a tunnel that promises a glorious hope and light called heaven. We can have victory from sin's grip and judgement today, but only through Jesus Christ ... only by faith in Him.

Please contact me if you have placed your faith in the Lord ... I would love to show you "how Great is our God and his amazing Grace, Love, and Faithfulness. :)