It's All About Him (24 page)

If you've never really had a relationship with God, and are interested, here are a few things to think about.

First,
it's God who stirs our hearts to seek Him. If you find yourself wanting to know God, then the Holy Spirit is moving in your life, like a gentle wind, refreshing you and drawing you to Christ.

The wind blows wherever it pleases.
You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
(John 3:8)

Second,
there's some bad news. The bad news is that human beings are sinful. The Bible says that
all
of us have sinned, violating God's absolute standards of pure perfection. Even the very best of us is spiritually contaminated . . . and so we can't connect with an utterly clean, holy God. Not only that, sin's fair consequence is death: spiritual death and separation from God.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
(Romans 3:23)

For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 6:23)

Third,
there's some good news. God chose to rescue us from our natural fate. He loves us and made a way for us to connect with Him. That way is His Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible says that God loved the world so much that He sent Jesus to take the punishment of
our
wrongdoing—so that we could be freed from the sentence of spiritual death.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8)

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
(John 3:16)

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father, except through Me.”
(John 14:6)

Fourth,
what can we do? We can receive Christ. “Receiving Christ” begins with admitting that you are a sinner, and asking Him to forgive you. Whether you and I appear to have led pretty good lives, or others see us as vile and filthy through and through, it really doesn't matter, in terms of our “worthiness.” All of us on the planet are unworthy of God's love and His gift of eternal life.

But He gives that gift of eternal life freely! All we need to do is accept it by agreeing with Him about the state of things, believing that Jesus paid the fair penalty for our sins when He died on the cross, and that He beat death and rose from the dead.

Based on everything we know of God, whether it's a lot or a little, and everything we know about ourselves, whether it's a lot or a little, we open our hearts, humbly giving control of our lives over to Him.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
(1 John 1:8–9)

To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
(John 1:12)

Fifth,
this is an act of faith. There may well be no drama, bells, whistles, or signs in the sky. You may or may not
feel
any different. But this is about believing that God will do what He says. It's about trusting in Someone we cannot see.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
(Hebrews 11:1)

By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
(Ephesians 2:8–9)

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
(Romans 3:22)

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
(Romans 10:9)

Sixth,
if you've prayed and opened your life to Christ, make sure to tell someone! Read the Gospel of Mark or John in the Bible, and connect with a local church, where the Bible is taught and the people love God, so you can grow and be supported in your new faith.

Resources

H
ere's a list of some of the resources that have been a great help to me in my spiritual journey. There are many more that I haven't listed, but I hope these few might be useful for you.

• The Bible! This is a nonnegotiable, of course. If you don't have a modern translation, get one! I've enjoyed using the New International Version and the New Living Translation.

• Dan Allender,
To Be Told
:
Know Your Story, Shape Your Future
(Colorado Springs:WaterBrook, 2005).

• Bible Study Fellowship, bsfinternational.org.

• Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King,
Experiencing God:
How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God
(Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1998).

• Community Bible Study, communitybiblestudy.org.

• C. S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
(New York: Macmillan, 1943).

• Max Lucado,
A Love Worth Givin
g (Nashville: W Publishing, 2006) and
It's Not About Me
(Nashville: Integrity, 2004).

• Beth Moore, Living Proof Ministries, lproof.org.

• Stormie Omartian,
The Power of a Praying Wife
(Eugene, OR.: Harvest House, 1997) and
The Power of a Praying Parent
(Eugene, OR.: Harvest House, 1995).

• Lewis Smedes,
The Art of Forgiving
(New York: Random House, 1996) and
Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don't Deserve
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

• Becky Tirabassi,
My Partner Prayer Notebook, The Change Your Life Daily Bible, Let Prayer Change Your Life, Sacred Obsession
.
www.beckytirabassi.com
.

• A. W. Tozer,
The Pursuit of God
and
The Knowledge of the Holy
(multiple editions of both available).

• Ellen Vaughn,
Radical Gratitude: Discovering Joy Through Everyday Thankfulness
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) and
Time Peace: Living Here and Now with a Timeless God
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).

• Philip Yancey,
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).

About the Authors

A
former flight attendant and elementary school teacher,
Denise Jackson
currently delights in devoting most of her time to her husband, country music superstar,Alan Jackson, and their three daughters, ages seventeen, fourteen, and ten. In addition to spending time with her family, Denise enjoys playing tennis and is an avid student of the Bible.

E
llen Vaughn
is an award-winning author and speaker. Her works of fiction include
The Strand
and
Gideon's Torch,
which she coauthored with Chuck Colson. She collaborated with Colson on eight other nonfiction books. Vaughn's recent solo works include
Radical Gratitude
and
Time Peace
. Former vice president of executive communications for Prison Fellowship, Vaughn speaks frequently at Christian conferences and has been featured at writers' seminars in the U.S. and Canada. She and her husband, Lee, live in Virginia with daughter Emily, fifteen, twins Haley and Walker, twelve, and an enormous dog named after C. S. Lewis.

NOTES

Chapter 14

Letting Go

1
. Matt. 13:31–32

2
. Mark 9:17–24

Chapter 15

Praying New Prayers

1
. Max Lucado,
A Love Worth Giving
(Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2002).

Chapter 17

Coming Home

1
. See Stormie Omartian,
The Power of a Praying Wife
(Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House, 1997).

2
. Here are some of the biblical sources for those “downloads”:

• “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again” (Jer. 31:3–4a).

• “‘For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,' declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity'” (Jer. 29:11–14a).

• “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isa. 43:19).

• “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9–10).

• “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age'” (Matt. 28:18–20).

Chapter 18

A Hard Road

1
. Phil. 4:6–7.

2
. Luke 7:37.

3
. Luke 7:47.

4
. “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:11–12).

5
. For the Christian, forgiving another human being has to be considered in light of God's forgiveness of
us
. We learn how to forgive by imitating what God has done in our own lives. I don't think I would have been able to let go of hurt and rage if I hadn't felt such an overwhelming sense of God's pardon of my sins, over and over again. “God is the original, master forgiver,” theologian Lewis Smedes wrote. “Each time we grope our reluctant way through the minor miracle of forgiving,we are imitating his style. I am not at all sure that any of us would have had imagination enough to see the possibilities in this way to heal the wrongs of this life had he not done it first.” Lewis B. Smedes,
The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don't Know How
(New York: Random House, 1996).

6
. 1 John 1:8–10.

Chapter 19

Making New Vows

1
. Jer. 29:10b–12 NLT.

2
. “That's the Way,” words and music by Pat Terry, copyright 1974,Word Music.

3
. Martha Beck, “Shame! Embarrassment! Humiliation!”
O
magazine,May 2004.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Heb. 12:2, italics added

Chapter 21

What Really Matters