“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Jn 3:16 NIV
When we choose to believe that God so loves us, when we choose to place our Faith in the life and sacrifice of Jesus, when we choose to surrender our lives to the Holy Spirit, we become a New Creation in Christ. Faith is powerful because it is the only way to receive this free gift of Eternity from God. I have heard it said this way: faith is simply us lifting our hand to God and receiving what He has already prepared to give us. You see, God has even given us Faith, but where we place this Faith makes all the difference.
Certainly, we can choose to place our Faith in our own efforts. We can think that our intelligence, our finances, our possessions, our careers and so on can somehow make us worthy of Heaven, but any one of those things can be gone in an instant. None of it is stable, much less eternal. We can even think our good deeds must count for something, but the Bible says that even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags! (Isa 64:6) That means there is always some kind of self-centered motivation for why we do what we do. None of this makes us holy, and surely none of it can get rid of the sinful nature we are all born with. Ahhh, but when we choose to use this Faith God has given us and simply believe in His Love and what He has already done, it changes everything.
<>< Peace, Diane
