Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Are you facing a new year and thinking, “Why?” Have you ever looked at your life and thought, “I wish I could start this all over again”? When we come to the end of ourselves, we have the chance to find the beginning of everything else.
Every person is the center of their own universe simply because that’s the only vantage point available to anyone who has ever lived. Usually by the time we’re old enough to know anything we’ve figured out that just because we’re the center of observable reality that reality doesn’t revolve around us. And it doesn’t take long to realize that the cold machinery of the space-time continuum takes as little heed to us as we do to the microbes in the ground we walk over every day.
The cold impersonal avalanche of happenstance leads any thinking person to the question, “What’s it all about?” The inscrutability of the carnival mirror maze we perceive as reality leads many to conclude there is no meaning, there is no point, and there is no reason. All there is is what it is and that’s all that there is. A sort of Popeye philosophy that leaves us constantly wandering about looking for the magic can of spinach that’ll make us strong enough to break through the mirrors to scan an open horizon with a clear vista. On our own it always seems to be just around the next corner.
This is where revelation comes in. A mouse in a maze never sees the whole picture. It only sees the corridor it happens to be in at the time. And though it searches and searches it always seems like someone has moved the cheese. Only through revelation can we see enough of the puzzle to learn which piece needs to go next to which piece to make the picture whole.
Lucky for us there is a God who created all this and He wants to allow us to see behind the curtain of the physical giving us a glimpse of the spiritual, which is the essence of it all.
I’m a Christian. By that I mean I have confessed Jesus Christ as my personal Lord, and I believe in my heart that God has raised Him from the dead. Because of that I believe I am saved, I am born-again, and I have a free pass out of hell and into heaven. And on a daily basis I do my best to follow Christ: loving and forgiving myself and the world around me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
This wasn’t always the case. Until I was thirty years old I was an unapologetic reprobate, and an atheist who cursed a God I proudly declared I didn’t believe in. Then I had a personal encounter with Christ which led me to study the Bible, which led to my confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and my unswerving belief that God has raised Him from the dead. Through this I was born again receiving a brand-new life here and now and that aforementioned free pass out of hell and into heaven.
I immediately transitioned from hopelessness to hopefulness, from despair to joy, from dread to expectancy. This is such a good deal I can’t bear to keep it to myself.
My words and my testimony will not get you anything. They can’t give you a new you. Only God’s Spirit can do that. We can’t think our way to God. It’s only through His revelation that we can get beyond the example of a blind man trying to picture an elephant by touching its trunk or tail. The only way I have found to find God is through His word. Think about it. If God only wrote one book out of all the billions of books in the world doesn’t it seem logical that it would be the most important thing we could possibly read? If we deny that His word is His word we close the door and throw away the key.
You might say, “Why do I need to be born again?
Here are some reasons and their biblical support:
1. Jesus Loved you enough to die for you.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
2. You cannot even please God if you’re not born again.
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
3. You will be living under God’s wrath if you’re not born again.
Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything: life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn’t see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.
4. You’ll be under the control of the devil if you’re not born again.
In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
5. You will experience the second death if you’re not born again.
Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire, and if anyone’s name is not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Jesus Christ is always there for us. He’ll answer us anytime we call him. He stands at the door of our heart and knocks. Open the door today and He’ll come in.
As a new year begins, we can all begin a new life. The mistakes of our past don’t have to be the blueprint of our future.
One of the most important truths in Christianity is that God loves us so much that He sought us out before we even start trying to find him. Referring to Himself in a title reserved for the Messiah Jesus said, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” He also said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”
Since He chose us, all we must do is choose Him and that new life starts right now. That is the Way. I have shared what the Bible says we must do to be saved; confess and believe. But it isn’t about a formula. Being a follower of Christ is much more than that. It’s following Christ. He said “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” because as He also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Christ doesn’t show us the way. He is the Way to a new you for a new year … or any year … any time.
Author: Robert Owens
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens [email protected] Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
