Food for Thought 2

There is only one true and living God, but human nature has made almost as many gods as there are stars in the sky.  However there is only one wise Creator God, whose name is JEHOVAH JESUS, the Creator of all things, in whom we live and move and have our being.  Will you have the God who was manifest in the flesh to be your Savior God?  Trust Him as your God and make Him your God forever and ever.  He will be my Guide even unto death.

Take Christ Jesus to be yours, as your God, whom you trust and love, whom you embrace and adore, apprehending Him by faith and love.  Is He truly your God now?  There must be no playing or pretense:  Jesus Christ must be accepted and received as yours personally.  If you are to be saved, you must by a deliberate act, give up yourself to Christ Himself, and take Him to be all your Salvation.

Crave God's forgiveness for Christ's sake.  Trust to His Son's atoning blood sacrifice.  Trust the Son of God to be your Savior.  He died for sinners, especially for you.  Let His bloody death be your Eternal Life.  He poured out His own life's blood to cleanse and forgive the guilty.  Let Jesus be your Prophet, sit at His feet and learn of Him.  Let Him be your King to reign over you.  Let Him be your Priest to offer His Perfect Sacrifice for your sins.  Jesus is willing and prepared to give Himself to every needy soul that is willing to receive Him. *John 1:12*

Let the Holy Ghost regenerate, teach, lead, sanctify, illuminate, and comfort you.  Without Jesus, you can do nothing that will ever please God.  The Father decreed, the Son purchased, the Holy Ghost applies.  Obey the Holy Ghost's warnings, promptings, cautions, and admonitions.  Refrain from committing old fleshly habits.  Burn your boats behind you, and never go back to the old country of your sins.  Put yourself under the Holy Ghost's control and leadership.  Resign your body to be His temple and instrument of Holiness.

God is now willing to pass by your iniquities, transgressions, and sins for Jesus' sake. He is the God who is ready to pardon, waiting to forgive the guilty.  Jesus came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.  The Gospel of the Grace of God is only for the guilty.  If you are not guilty, there is no Gospel for you.  The Invisible God put on human flesh, He came down to Earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to save the guilty.  God bypassed the elite and well-connected and is born in a cattle shed in Bethlehem.  Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ.  Snap out of your sinful slumber and wicked stupor.  You must go directly to Jesus Christ, cry out to Him for mercy and pardon.

Jesus says this about us:  I have been grievously wronged by the sinner; his injury to Me is a very cruel one; there is no remedy for it, but I will Myself bear their sins and the penalty for all the wrong which has been done to Me.  The offender has broken My Law, and there is a penalty laid upon him for what he has done, and he righteously deserves to bear it. It was an offense against Me, and he deserves to be punished for it, but I will bear the whole penalty Myself.  I offer Myself up to suffer in the sinner's place, that he may be accounted innocent and go free.

As the Just Judge, God must punish all sin.  There is a necessity that the Judge of all the Earth should do right.  The justice of God, the Judgment to come is awaiting the unregenerate sinner.  Sin must be punished, but the Judge Himself stoops to bear the penalty for the offenses committed against Himself, to bear the consequences of sin committed against His own authority and His own person, and to bear those consequences in His own person that the offender may be reconciled to Him.

God Himself becomes the Substitute for those who have broken His own Law, and done despite to His name, and as a real man in His own body on the tree bore the consequences of human sin which should have fallen upon His enemies, us guilty sinners. God patiently importunes and pleads with the offender who refuses His free pardon by Blood.  God's divine Love comes to us throughout a wondrous plan, by which Jesus came to be a Substitute, to live and die in our place, that we might go free. The Cross is the display of self-denying, amazing, unparalleled love.  Jesus has taken our sins upon Himself, and bore the penalty due on account of those sins.

The divine Law will justify no man till he keeps it perfectly.  The Law condemns every man who has violated it but once.  The Law demands eternal death as the penalty for a single offense.  The Law casts the guilty man into prison, and he can never be released till he has paid the whole fine.  Jesus bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and He has freed us from the penalty that was due to us.

Every atheist ought to be ashamed of not loving the Lord Jesus Christ, and not trusting such a Savior as the Lord Jesus Christ is.  God in human flesh, bleeding, dying, bearing the penalty of human sin, presenting Himself as our sinless Blood Sacrifice and Atonement, and He now says that, whosoever believeth in Me shall not perish, but shall have Everlasting Life.  If you must spite anybody, spite anyone but the Christ of God.

Blindness and hardness of heart comes upon the man who rebels against God.  If you would escape the snares and traps of life, look well to your tongue, keep it from speaking evil, and that it speaks not blasphemy against God, or slander against your fellowman.  Keep your lips from guile, that is, from deceit, from double meanings, from saying one thing and meaning another.  Speak plain, say what you mean, mean what you say.  Come to Christ with your whole heart and understanding, confess Him before men, magnify Him with your words and deeds.

You have sinned, your heart is ever inclined to sin. You have broken God's Law and rejected Christ; you need God's divine forgiveness; you need a complete change of nature, a new birth, a conversion and regeneration.  Nothing short of the new birth, a thorough total radical change will make you ready to enter Heaven.  The most unpopular truth in the world today came form the mouth of Jesus Christ, "Ye must be born again."

No effort performed by man can ever regenerate a dead soul - it is the work alone of the Holy Spirit, who creates us anew in Christ Jesus.  Men despise that truth.  The spiritual truth still displeases the self-righteous sin-loving natural man.  Give God your heart and soul through Christ, serve Him because you love Him.  Surrender to Jesus your inner self and body daily.  The main necessity is the work of the Holy Spirit.  *John 3:7* must be your constant cry.  Being born again is not the evolving of something good out of you that was hidden away there; no, the new birth is the putting into you the divine nature of Jesus Christ which was not there.  The New Birth is the Holy Spirit's quickening of you from your death in sin.

God has done so much for me and that encourages me to turn away from my sins.  Willful wickedness is a horrible and hateful thing.  Loathe and leave your iniquities.  Abhor selfishness and egotism.  Be very personal and individual about your own Christianity. You must be born again individually and personally, Eternal Life must come to you by a personal transaction between Jesus Christ and yourself.

Leave the bottle, lascivious ways, fornication, uncleanness, dishonesty, tricks of the trade, cheating, stinting, loafing, and lying.  Human nature is fond of human wisdom and ability.  Leave off your fretting, fuming; being anxious and peevish.  Human nature wants to wash itself.  Trust to the boundless mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  Come to God for the New Birth and ask Him to change your inner nature.  There is no good thing whatsoever in you.  A soul must get alone with God if it is really born again, for a saved soul cannot live without private prayer.  A love for the word of God, and for private prayer is needful for daily victory.