Once you accept God into your heart and life it is not just about attending church on Sundays and singing songs on Sunday mornings. It’s not about wearing your best button down and pair of khakis and walking in church with the wife and kids and dropping them off at their classrooms and sitting for an hour and a half falling asleep by the end of service. It’s not about looking good on the outside to make the world think life is just dandy and stress free. Real life is hard. Real life is what goes on behind closed doors. The breakdowns, the sleepless nights, the trials and tribulations. The fights, the breakups, the addictions, the mental health. So many times people think that Christianity is a walk in the park. It’s definitely not!

Having read the New Testament and knowing about the stories of Adam and Eve, Jonah, Noah and the Ark but never actually opening the Bible at home is passive Christianity. You want to have that hunger, that food for the soul, and a desire to dig deeper, to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s involves a lifetime of soul searching, going within and knowing yourself and your shortcomings, and giving it all to God. It’s about reading about miracles, signs and wonders in the Bible and wanting that for your own life. It’s crying out to the Creator while at your lowest moments. It is a life of constant conversation with The Most High, working to be better and keeping the faith, even in the darkest of nights.

For the real born-again believer, they yearn to be in the presence of the Lord. We stay in scripture, maybe not daily, but we use it as a tool for personal growth, to learn and apply wisdom, to learn spiritual warfare, and see the words written and take heed to the warnings. We don’t want to be hypocrites or pharisees. The pharisees did everything so strict according to the law that they didn’t see the need for Jesus. The thought they were in good standing with God because they followed strict laws.

But, Jesus came so we could escape condemnation and have forgiveness and walk in total victory and freedom. Salvation is not about weighing your good deeds verses your bad deeds. Sure, we will be judged by every thought, word, and action. But not for salvific purposes. To be saved means you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and his finished work on the cross. It’s Romans 10:9. For 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.

It’s about Jesus’ finished work on the cross. It’s about the blood. That is what Passover was. In the story of Exodus in the Old Testament it is a story of how God sent ten plagues to Pharoah after having a heardened heart and not letting the Isrealites be freed from slavery in Egypt. The final act was killing the first born son of every family. It sounds terrible and I know many people ask why would they want to worship a God like that. This actually shows God’s faithfulness to His believers. This was divine judgement on Pharoah and the Egyptian gods. God instructed Moses to tell the Isrealite families to sacrifice a lamb and smear its blood on the doorposts. This was to signify to the angels of God to ‘passover’ each home that had the blood on the doorposts and spare that home. It wasn’t about who was in the house, it was about the blood. And all throughout scripture we see God’s people being disobedient and there sure was punishment as He chastises whom He loves. But He didn’t forget them. His eyes were always on them and when they repented and ask for God’s mercy, He proved to be faithful and blessed them.

So many people today take the ‘easy believism’ way where they belive that all you must do is believe. Although I think this is true to an extent, it’s fair to say that if you only honor Him with your lips, your heart may be far from Him, as told in Matthew 15:8. In other words, it’s not a license to sin, either. This means that God does require some growth, some change, and that when you are saved by God that we read the Scriptures so that our own lives can start to take the shape of Jesus’ life and reflect Him. For example, that includes forgiving your enemies, loving thy neighbor as yourself, love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and to live a little more like Jesus did, like having a heart for remembering and taking care of the poor and widowed.

Of course, it was Jesus who sat with the sinners. After all, that’s what church is. It’s a hospital for sinners. It can become easy for some in the faith to become self-righteous or think they are better than others because they aren’t facing many problems that others have. And, sometimes when I am on a long streak of doing well, I feel like that. Not necessarily better than someone, but in the sense that I have to remind myself that we do not work our way to heaven; that it is a free gift. I think that we sin most days without giving thought to it; lusting of the flesh from looking at someone of the opposite sex, anger, gluttony, being selfish, telling a white lie. And that’s why I am so grateful for the blood of Jesus. Becuase if it was a matter of perfectionism no one would make it. And God made it a point to use very seemingly unlikey people in Scripture.

However, just as we also saw in Scripture, King David commited adultury and got Bathsheba’s husband killed. There are a few kinds of Christians in these categories. Some that habitually sin and stay in an unrepentant lifestyle-which I had lived for years, and all glory to God for being faithful to me. That’s not to say I didn’t ask for forgiveness but sometimes I didn’t. Or, I knew I was lying and whatever sin I was doing I knew I was going to do it again. And there is a difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction is when you are born again, it’s the Holy Spirit helping to convict you of your sins and turn to God. That is a good state to be in. Condemnation is I think why some people turn away from God completely because they think it’s too hard of a walk. But, what they really need to know is that in Romans 8:1, it states that there is ‘no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.’

Those that are self-condemning are being extra hard on theirselves and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they don’t need to be so hard on themselves. God still loves them. God is faithful. It is only when you feel absolutely no remorse for your sins for an extended period of time that you should fear, because if you don’t feel conviction, that’s a problem. Not only is it a morality issue but one might argue that maybe that person was never saved to begin with. And that is a scary place to be: to live your whole life thinking you said the sinner’s prayer once, attended church but never had a relationship with God. And if you don’t live as you ought to, God will chastise you but he also will give you many chances. I think if you think you are saved and gotten to a point of zero remorse then you should be worried that God has given you over to your sin and a hardened heart.

And, yes, while I say I was once guilty of not living like Christ, I was like David in Psalms where I felt so bad about my wrongdoings that I begged and pleaded for God to give me another chance. My conviction was working so I knew the Holy Spirit was working in me. Besides, for me, I was never a thief and a horrible person in that way. Not that it makes a difference. A sin is a sin is a sin. But my problem was fornication. It’s been hard as heck being a single Christian at my age! Now as I know that my faith and strength is growing in God, I look back and shake my head and think, If only I could have saved myself for marriage 20 years ago, I probably would have met my spouse already, and saved a whole lot of heartbreak.

But I think God allows us to fall from grace just to show His mercy and forgiveness as well as bring the attention back to Jesus and the importance of His death, buriel, and resurrection. And for that I am so thankful.