THE WORST CAN NEVER HAPPEN

So many people are trying to become pleasing to God. Then there are those who cry out, “Well…I doubt they ever really were Christians." Nothing makes me angrier. How judgmental can a person become than to condemn someone based solely on a few external actions they have witnessed?

Which leads me back to my original point. It’s all judging, and I am becoming convinced that one of the things we people do best is judge others and ourselves. Or, should I say, one of the things we do worst? That’s just the trouble, we don’t judge rightly, not even when it comes to ourselves.

We seem so busy with trying to fix the faults we find in ourselves, and I seldom see Christians simply enjoying life. The saddest thing I witness above all is that of someone who has been a believer for a long time, whose life becomes less and less joy filled. Yet time and again, I try to tell these people that if in fact they really do think that God loves them, and if in fact they really do think that they can never be separated from Him, there is absolutely no reason in the world for their lives to be anything less than as full and fantastic a life as they can imagine. No reason whatsoever.

This leads me to believe that not many people really think God loves them, or really think they can never be separated from Him, because not many people are living their lives in such a fantastic way. How my heart yearns for them to know for certain so that they can live free of fear; and, having that fear completely removed, they can excel and soar unfettered by the worries they once were enslaved to.

I will tell you a secret. The one thing I notice more than anything else in new believers is a changed life. Not just a life that now struggles to be free of the things that confined them. What I witness in them is true joy and freedom. Somehow, from the moment they believe to the moment they have been with Jesus for a length of time, that freedom slowly seeps out of them, until they are but a shadow of what they once were.

What is the cause of this? I believe one part of a cause of this is the belief that not all are redeemed, and that somehow, it is our position to judge the “unsaved” first, and then offer them an olive branch which they are free to accept or reject. The second part is that they never believe themselves to be truly redeemed; they always seem to have to prop themselves up on a bible verse, or in the past, when it seemed like they were more joyful.

The most alive Christians I have met have been the ones who could tell me RIGHT NOW how free they feel, how loved they feel, and how secure they feel. Truly, once all fear is gone, the land beneath our feet is like air under the wings of a bird. We can fly, when we are not shackled with fear. And what do we have to fear? Absolutely nothing.

Peace to you all has been proclaimed by Jesus Christ and his followers, peace between God and man. There is now nothing to fear or to be condemned for, so stop condemning yourself if you are, and stop fearing the worst if you do. The worst can no longer happen.