The Point Is To Live

When I believed in eternal conscious torment, I believed that my purpose in life what solely to help save as many people as I could from ending up there. The thing that kept me from feeling useless was the idea that I was somehow able to save a person's "soul" form being damned to hell for all eternity. Well now, you can see how this became a problem when I realized that God didn't need me at all to save His creation because, in fact, He did it all on His own. When I realized that I was completely useless to God when it came to saving people, I lost my purpose in life. But, then I realized, I have an even greater purpose in life now. Before I was giving people not good news, no not at all, I was giving them an ultimatum, I was selling them fire insurance for something that is yet to happen. I was promising them happiness in the future. If, and only if, they themselves put faith in Christ. But now, oh man, now I am able to bring happiness even in this current evil age! Why? Because now I proclaim GOOD NEWS! The true gospel! That all is taken care of and there, in fact, will be a happily ever after. That is a glorious expectation indeed. Now not only do I have a reason to live, I have the drive to actually proclaim the gospel. Whereas before, I dreaded telling someone that their loved ones could possibly be burning in hell and that they too would end up in hell unless they did something about it. I truly have good news. Our purpose is to tell others this news so that they to can enjoy life to the fullest. Remember when we thought we had to please God by our actions? Wasn't it terrible? Never knowing if you did well enough that day to even talk to God. Thinking He is ashamed of you and upset at you for something you did or didn't do? Ugh, that weight is just awful. You can't enjoy life at all feeling like you have to measure up. But thank God that we do measure up because of what Christ did. We can't screw it up, and that is the Gospel. That is the point. To live freely and fully is the point. Grace is so simple that people think it is too good to be true. When know that God is good, and we know that He is true. Grace will always super-abound.

Past Regrets

Awhile back I did a blog about free will and prophecy. I made the point that if something at all goes out of order in God's plan, then prophecy would not come true. If you are off by the smallest degree while going from point A to point B, you will end up at point WTF. 

The reason I bring this up is because I know a lot of people who either regret their past or feel like they aren't doing things correctly right now. Let me put it this way. If you regret your past, then you are not trusting God's plan for the future. Everything that you have done in this life, everything you are doing, and everything you will do is in accord with our Creator's absolute will. Is this fatalistic? Sure, if you want to call it that. Clyde Pilkington calls it God-ism rather than fatalism, and I 100% agree with that. 

There is nothing at all fatal about our Sovereign Creator and Father being in control. Fatalism should be what we call the idea of free-will. If the clay were in control of forming itself into a pot, what would be the outcome? It would still just be a lump of clay at the end of the day. Clay does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to contribute to itself being formed into a vessel of any shape or form. The Potter is the One that takes care of that. 

We are all just clay in the Potter's hand and we cannot do a single thing to change what God is turning us into. Sometimes it seems like life is spinning out of control. Well maybe that is just the wheel we are on and God is turning up the speed so He can smooth us out. 

Listen if there is anything at all you can say to someone to bring comfort, it should be that God is in control. This was used so many times by my church "family" growing up to try to comfort me. If only I had known it was actually true, oh the relief it would have brought. Sadly though, I thought that God only had a mere influence on humanity and that we could easily thwart his will. 

Fatalism is believe that God's will can be stalled and/or thwarted. Find comfort knowing that this isn't so, and that He will do ALL His good pleasure and one day EVERY knee will bow and EVERY tongue confess. God will be ALL IN ALL.