Have You Opened The Letter?

There once was a little girl whose father had passed away shortly after she was born. When she reached her teen years, she found out through her foster parents that her father had written her a letter and had bound it in an envelope. The envelope was only to be opened by her. When she received this envelope, she put off opening it for a good while. She was in her teenage years, she was going to parties, dating boys, and just living her life. The envelope collected dust on top of her nightstand.

When it was time for her to begin thinking of college, her foster parents whom she was staying with fell on financial hardships and she wasnt able to pursue further schooling. One lonely night she decided to open her fathers envelope. It was a very long letter. She began to read.  The first line read, “My child….I love you so very much.” Angered at her situation, selfishly,  she thought to herself, “Loving me wont send me to college.” And she read no farther in the letter.

This young girl became a woman very fast. She bounced from hard job to dead end job. Eventually turning to a life on the streets to make a living. She lived in motel rooms and sometimes slept in abandon cars. And every so often, she would pull out her fathers love letter to her and begin to read. Only to stop angered that when her father died, he left her to fend through this awful life alone.

The years passed and soon this young lady became a hardened old woman. She spent her days begging on the side of the road and her nights in a local homeless shelter. And one night, as she reflected on her uneventful life, she pulled out her fathers love letter.  And for the first time, she read it all the way through.

Her father spent the majority of the first few pages telling her how special she was and how much he loved her. He said he only wanted the best for her. He went on in the letter to list certain contacts he had that would be able to assist her in getting in the finest schools. Her father had made business connections high up in the corporate world that he’d given her number to contact. They would be waiting to make sure she had a first class job.  Her father went on to say that he had worked hard all of his life and had saved all of his fortune in a savings account for his daughter. There was enough money in the account to ensure she would have a luxurious life. Her father closed out the letter apologising for his untimely death. But he went on to state his joy of knowing that his one and only daughter would live a comfortable life.

If only she would have taken the time to read her fathers love letter. She didnt know her father was a wealthy man. But her father told her about himself, and the awesome life he had planned for her. But she never took the time to read the letter. Does this story strike a cord with you as it did me? We can all relate to this woman. We all have a father whom we have yet to meet face to face. But he has given us his love letter.  In this letter he has told us of himself and of how our lives can be filled with joy. But we are too caught up in our own lives to take time to read this love letter. So as a result, we question when we go through hardships. And we doubt our Heavenly father. Ultimately, we end up living our lives missing out on the many blessings God so eagerly wants to give us because we dont see the urgency or importance in reading his love letter to his children. But the letter remains close to us. This letter has a name. It is the Holy Bible. And our father is Jesus Christ…Almighty God.

Is the Bible important in knowing Christ? If anything, I hope that through these posts I have stressed that importance. There is a method to my madness. I still consider myself new to this cyber world of blogging. Its been almost three years since I wrote my first post. And I dont know if I have ever really explained what motivates me. Im not talking about my own regeneration in Christ, which did occur three years ago. Im strictly speaking about my motivation. My motivation is first and foremost that God be glorified through the many ramblings that flow from my brain to my fingers as they peck away on the computer. But I have to be totally honest with you. This is confession time for me. My motivation is you.

Does that sound as corny to you as it does to me? Let me explain. Three years ago I was changed…..regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Ive told my story many times. The Cliff Notes version is that I was saved at a young age only to realize almost twenty years later that I really never had a real relationship with Christ. It is possible to walk the aisle and say a prayer of salvation in a moment of emotion and still walk away unsaved. It is possible to say the right words to God and the next day still have no desire for holiness. It is possible to deceive yourself into living a comfortable, conformative, spin on a Christianity that neatly fits into what the world would deem acceptable.

And Im not the only victim of this deception. Many people fall into this false salvation. Some may not even be aware of it. Because our culture has so much changed the Jesus of the Bible that the true Christ is not recognizable unless we are students of the Bible. Today the world would have Jesus be very politically correct. Its as if we have taken the real Jesus and given him a make over. We’ve made him a little whiter in completion and have turned a deaf ear to stories of the wrath of God and locked them away in exchange for painting a constant smile and demeanor of acceptance on Jesus. The stories of Jesus becoming angered at the church being mocked have been put away in order to create a Jesus that appears to be sad when we sin but continues to beg us to repent. We want to serve a Jesus that is accepting of our lifestyles regardless of how worldly they may be and a Jesus that owes us to answer our prayers. Basically the world has turned Jesus into a modern day Tinkerbell.

And thats the God the world wants to serve. Because he fits into life and requires no real change. But that is not the God of the Bible. In Matthew the Bible tells us that many will be turned away from the Kingdom of God because they never knew him. If someone has this tame image of Jesus, then they are in danger, because they dont know the God of the Bible. Yes God is loving, and God is kind, but God is also a just God. The God of the Bible is not tame. He is ferocious. He is love. He is grace. And he is terrifying. The Bible tells us that when God returns, men who are living in sin upon seeing his coming will cry out for mountains to fall on them. Thats terror.

My motivation is for the word of God to come to life right before your eyes each time you read a post from me. I want you to see the bible in a different light. Three years ago I believed in God, but reading the Bible was so not relevant to my life…or so I thought. But that was because I took the Bible at surface value. I cracked it open at church mainly to appear just so, but aside from that it never got opened. But when I let God changed my heart, I began to study the Bible. And it never ceases to amaze me how timeless the word of God is. Not only did it speak to generations before us, but it speaks directly to our culture!

I have made this statement before and Ill say it again. If anyone doubts the word of God, or is even a non believer all together, I believe it is because they have not truly sought God through scripture with all their hearts. The Bible tells us again that those who seek God with all their heart will find him. Look at the stanch atheists of past decades. CS Lewis was a scholar and magnificent intellect of the twentieth century. But he began to study Gods word, more to prove Christ wrong than to seek him. But in the process, he became a believer and one of the greatest Christian thinkers of our world. And there have been many more men like Lewis who have journeyed into the Bible a skeptic only to emerge a believer.

The Bible is not just random stories strung together with a bunch of moral points thrown in. It is not an episode of Diff’rent Strokes or GI Joe. The Bible was not written by God to be the instruction manual of our lives as many have described it. The Bible was written with one point. Jesus.  The Bible was written so that we may know God. So that we may know his unconditional love, his undeserved grace, and yes even his fiery wrath. And so many are living outside of a relationship with God and they dont even know it. And its because they do not know the word of God. How well can you know the details of the life of one of the former presidents of the United States if you dont read their biography. You may know they highlights of their life, but you dont really know the persona of that individual. You cannot know what drives them without studying them. The bible wasnt given to us by God as something to read if we got bored or if we had a question or problem in our lives. Yet many worldly Christians treat Gods word as leisure reading.

We serve such a big God. Can you imagine….we serve a God who tells mountains to be lifted and they obey. He told the planets to align and they obeyed. He told the sea that it could only come so far onto land and it obeyed. And then God looks at his most treasured creation, mankind, and asks us to love him and obey him and we say no. God love us! And he wants us to know him! And honestly, reading Gods word and studying the scriptures have opened my eyes to so much. Three years ago, it was literally as if a light came on and I was discovering the Bible for the very first time. And when we study Gods word constantly, it becomes less of a chore and more of something that we are excited about. Because it becomes apparent that He is speaking directly to us!

This has been sort of a soap box tangent so to speak. And I dont know if I have done justice to what is really on my heart. I just want to stress the importance of having a relationship with Christ. Baptism doesnt save. And repeating the right words followed by an “amen” doesnt save. If all it takes is uttering a prayer to be saved then its not Christianity, its witchcraft. A prayer may frame what has been done in a persons heart, but the Holy Spirit does the work. Salvation is no work on our part, but a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.  My question to you….have you opened your love letter from God? I want people to know Jesus. And the only way to know him is through a personal relationship. And what better way to know Christ than becoming a daily student of his word.

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