Have you ever had that moment where you are trying to help someone with something, and they will just turn away, even if they have told you everything? This is just one example, but I have had this happen quite a few times, and I have never been able to come to a reason why it happens. Until now.
I talk a lot about Young Life stuff on here, but I think this is just too important not to get out. Some of my friends think that life on earth is just hatred. There is no such thing as love, and they will never know what love is. Maybe that live doesn't have a chance of ever existing. This is a problem. We were not created to feel this way. Part of me just wants to scream that they were created by God, to know the greatest love ever, but you can't shove things down someone's throat. How then, are we to help them see that Jesus Christ loves them deeply, and that they were made for more than the life they seem to think is it. It breaks my heart that there are friends of mine, that I talk to, who don't believe that it can happen. "I'm unlovable" "Nothing can love me" I just wish that I could physically pull Jesus back down from Heaven. I just wish.
"For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 We all did it. We went away. We've turned away. "We all, like sheep have gone astray. Each of us turned to our own way..." Isaiah 53:6. We went on a search, looking to find that voice we long to hear in our heads. "I love you, I love you..." We go everywhere. Nothing we look to on Earth can possibly measure up though. Imagine the hammer and bell game you see at the fair. You must hit the center of a pad, in order to ring a bell. Imagine that the top section, when you ring the bell is God's voice, saying "I Love You!" Anything lower says "I don't love you" "I don't like you", maybe even "I Hate You!" Maybe we've tried again and again with the things of the world that we think will bring us real life. Truth is, we aren't strong enough to hit the pad hard enough. We can't, on our own strength ring that bell. After all the trying, and every failed attempt. We come to the conclusion that God can't exist. We say to ourselves, and maybe openly that "Nothing will ever love me. Love is dead" I can tell you, just because we can't ring the bell, doesn't mean it's not there.
Another example I can give is to think about a hallway ending in, say, 5 doors. Door one, sports. Door 2, relationships. Door 3 academics. Door 4, money. Door 5 God. You go to door one, and sure it opens for a while. Say you break your leg. That door closes You go into door 2. Say you start dating the hottest guy or girl in your school. Next thing you know, you find yourself on the receiving end of a break up talk. You might have loved them with your everything, and now door 2 is closed. On to door 3. You study your life away, you are going to get into that Ivy league school. You get to your senior year, and you get a rejection letter from the school you spent your life to get to. Door 3, closed. Door 4, Maybe you try to save all of the money that you can, trying to get that car, trying to get that house. When you find out that the house or car just got sold. Or maybe you buy many things with the money that you do have. When those things run out of entertainment, or use, where are you? Outside of a closed 4th door.
The fifth door, being God though, was locked when we turned to our own way. It says in Romans "For the wages of sin is death" We can not hope to get back into that door. We walked out of that very door when we turned away. We can try our hardest to open the door, but the truth is, we can't hope to unlock it. We can't break it down, because like the bell we can't ring, the door requires us to be stronger than we can be. Luckily, there is a way. God sees us outside his window. Trying to open His door. Seeing that we couldn't, He sent His son. Jesus Christ, in order to take away the very thing that makes us weak. We have a great weight on our back, that takes our energy. This weight is the reason we can't hit that bell. The reason we can't break open the door, or unlock it. God sent Jesus Christ to not only remove that weight, and destroy it. He sent Jesus Christ to become the key to the door. We no longer have to try to fight our way in. The door can be unlocked through Jesus, but like many locks, there is only one key. The key that Jesus is looks like this: Three nails, holding up Jesus on a cross, taking sin away. No other key has this shape. So no other key will open the door to God. "For the wages of sin is death....." There is another half to the story. The second half to the verse is "But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Using the bell, For the wages of sin is the inability to strike the bell, but the gift of God is strength enough to hit the bell so hard, it continuously rings out "I LOVE YOU!" Take the door, We will be able to open the door to God's house, and be in a relationship with him. All because of Jesus. My only question, what keeps us from doing so?
The thought that we are unlovable? Jesus was thinking about you specifically when He stretched His hands out on the cross. If there was just one person on Earth to ever live, Jesus would have still done it. He wouldn't have said no. He would have done it for JUST ONE PERSON. Even if they thought they were unlovable. Why? Because He loves you that much. He would have done it for Megan, for Jaime. For Josh. For Chris. For Kendall, Zack, Shannon, Eric, Joe. If it were only them! All we have to do now, is walk through the door. Or hit the pad. We can hit the bell with the hammer of Jesus' crucifixion. Giving us the way to do these things. all we have to do, is let Him do so.
You now have a choice. You can say "I'm not ready" I don't know enough about Jesus, or God to walk in. That's fine, we still love you. You can also say "No" I don't want to walk in, I don't want anything to do with God. You can keep looking through the other doors. Keep hitting the pad with sin on your back. That's fine as well. He's still for you. We love you just as well. You can also say "I want that" or "I am ready to give my life to Jesus" All you have to do is say "Yes" Knowing that you haven't done anything to earn it, or deserve it. It's all because of God's immense love for you.
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I hope this will help you guys.
I love you guys.
TJ
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