You're Wasting Your Time

One of the great questions of all time has already been asked.  Here it is ... "Do you really believe, that what you believe, is really real?"

Really ... do you believe it's really real?  You may say, "Of course I do."  You do know I'm speaking about what you know and believe about God.  I'm going to share some things about God; things like His character and integrity, and things I believe about God ... things I really believe are really real.

I believe ... there is but one living and true God, who is infinite (limitless, impossible to measure or calculate) in His being and perfection; an invisible spirit without body or material parts, immense, incomprehensible, having no limits or boundaries, absolute and eternal without beginning or end.

God is all-sufficient (in and of Himself) without need of anything.  He is the cause of all life and all things and has sovereign dominion (authority and power over them) and works all things according to His own counsel and will in whatsoever He pleases.

All things are open, naked and manifest (revealed) in His sight.  God's knowledge has no limits in time, space, extent or magnitude.  He is infallible (incapable of failure or error) and independent (free from external control) so as nothing to Him is uncertain or contingent on circumstances.  In all His works, in all His commands He is Holy; so that whatever worship, obedience or duty He requires of man is due Him.

Relating to providence ... God, as the Creator of all things, upholds, directs, disposes and governs ... all ... creatures, actions and things, from the greatest event to the least, according to His foreknowledge and will, through His mercy and grace forever.

All things come to pass according to the decree of God, who is the first cause; and yet He has also ordained these same things to fall away, change or dissolve according to the nature of second causes, either by necessity or contingently (determined by conditions or circumstances.)

God, operating in His providence, makes use of various means; yet is free to work within those means, outside those means or against those means at His pleasure.  As God, He has a right to give whatever He so chooses, in whatever proportions, at whatever times, and with whatever conditions He pleases.  He may therefore give or withhold any or all of His blessings as He pleases.

God, by the counsel of His own will, freely ordains whatsoever comes to pass; but yet ... God is not the author of sin ... but has decreed the evil in nature and its second causes be established as a result of sin.

Although God knows what will happen in all future conditions; He has not decreed any such thing to happen because He foresaw it in the future as that which would happen upon such conditions.

By what looks like permission to sin, by giving man a free will that might lead to sin ... the sinfulness proceeds only from man and not from God, who neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.

As for unrepentant men, God not only withholds His grace, but exposes them to their own lusts and gives them over to their moral perversions, the temptations of the world and the power of Satan; and by that they harden themselves under the same means which God uses for the softening of others.

As to mankind in general, God extends or withholds His mercy and grace as He pleases in accordance with His will and sovereign power over His creatures, which includes man.  By doing so He ordains them to honor or dishonor in the same manner as seems good to the potter over the clay.

Concerning free will ... God has endued the will of man with a natural liberty and freedom of choice that is not predisposed to a specified attitude, action or condition, such as good or evil.  God has not pre-programed us to only accept His way in life.  Man must have that choice for himself or it is not free will.

In the beginning, man in his state of innocence, had the freedom of choice and the power of self will to do that which was good and pleasing to God ... but man was also given the ability and freedom ... so that he might fall from that state of innocence.

Man ... by his fall into a state of sin, lost all ability to will himself by natural means to spiritual good; because the flesh, being altogether adverse (hostile and opposed to spiritual good) is not able to save himself from that sin.

But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, (Jesus) to become the last blood sacrifice, (really the only sacrifice that ever satisfied the justice of a holy God) when He died upon the cross and paid the complete full price for man's sins.

The good news ... when fallen sinful man believes on Jesus, God converts such a man and translates him into the state of grace and frees him from the natural bondage of sin, and by grace alone ... enables such a man to freely will and do that which is spiritually good.

Even so ... because of his remaining fleshly nature, man does not perfectly ... nor only ... do and will that which is good, but also that which is evil.

And so we are yet today ...

After trying to describe the character, integrity, magnitude, and the power and authority of Almighty God ... and touching only very little about Jesus as the Son of God ... may I ask you two more questions?

Do you believe, or can you believe, that what I have written about God is true and represents not everything, but some of what the Holy Bible, the printed Word of God has to say about this loving, kind, merciful and forgiving God who wants and desires that you and I get to know Him better.

God had a relationship with Adam and Eve.  They walked together in the Garden.  When Jesus came as God in the flesh, He had a close relationship with a disciple named John, perhaps closer than with any other man.  Jesus wants that kind of relationship with you.

Now the second question ... no matter how much you can believe of what I have shared ... "Do you really believe, that what you believe, is really real?"

I ask that question again because, your eternal life may ... literally depend on it. 

If you don't believe, that what you believe, is really real ... you're wasting your time.