Salvation in Christ

We as man have spent most of our days seeking and pursuing truth and life. Everyone wants to be accepted, everyone wants to be loved. These are universal truths among all peoples and among all cultures.

Humanity has spent so much time seeking truth, especially regarding religion, that it is easy to forget why we began to look in the first place. When it comes down to it, all men feel that there is something missing, an emptiness that cannot be filled no matter what we try to fill it with. I think it is safe to say that when we attempt to fill it, it may feel good for a while but brings us right back to where we started, and that is seeking to fill that hole.

Truly I think Christ is the only thing that can fill such a whole that has been laid inside of us. It only makes sense that man is incapable of filling it himself since he is created and not complete in himself. It takes a soft heart and an open mind to be able to accept it, but Christ in Christianity is the only example of self-sacrifice in an act of service to bring all of man to a position of holiness so that he may be close to his creator. No other religion in the world teaches that man is fallen and can’t do anything to save himself, but simply has to rely on a just, loving God.

Romans 3:23

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

 It seems indefinitely difficult to wrap our minds around becoming in touch with God once we realize that we have a sin barrier between us but there is hope.

John 14:6 says

“For I am the way the truth and the life and none come to the Father except through me”

If we choose to accept the one who has accepted all the suffering and pain of the world so that we know God which truly is life, then there is salvation in that. It is not difficult and requires no works or acts for us to be saved. It simply requires a hint of faith.

Romans 10:9

“If anyone believes in their heart that Jesus is Lord and confesses with their mouth that He rose from the dead, they will be saved”

If you believe and confess the verse above, you are a child of the living God and a part of the kingdom of Christ. If you have any desire to know more or learn more about this, leave a comment.

Selflessness or Love?

      C.S. Lewis brings up a remarkable point in one of his daily devotionals. He brings to light the realization that if we ask someone what is the greatest action or character trait we can show or portray to other people, people would answer selflessness. What's the problem with that right? Well it seems that it does truly show that our culture has become so narcissistic that even when we are talking about how to be "pious" we are still absorbed in the idea of self. The answer really implies that by my neglecting of self I am showing everyone else nobility and Christ. The reality is that we should be showing love that is the answer, not SELFlessness, which is making it about others instead of making it all revolve around self. 

     I think this shows a level of feeling inadequate, we desire sometimes to be so Christlike we in our own minds make it about how we can keep from granting our own desires or ambitions. We fear being selfish to a point where in the attempt to love others, the motive is to be the opposite of selfless instead of love itself. This is all very revelational especially to me because I am one of those people who feels the need to see my actions as selfless or selfish, trying to judge myself and every action and motive. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but my phrasing and mindset is wrong, I should be trying to show love in every action and thought. Christ doesn't call us to be selfless toward others and toward God, he calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. We can't get lost in the notion that it is about us even when making it about others. This is something I felt needed to be shared on a more widespread note. 

      No need to rant on about this idea, be blessed hope you enjoyed it!

My Testimony

Childhood

     When I was a child my life was pretty simple. I went to a private school and attended a small Lutheran church with my mom and dad. What made it interesting was being part of one of the very few Hispanic/Caucasian families in town. Oh and my dad was 50+ years older then my mom. From the start people would always give us terrible looks and that definitely began to stir up a sense that I am not  accepted. Some people of course would be kind but you could always hear others snickering in the background about how wrong and messed up our family is because of the age and racial difference in my parents. They were good parents but also fought a lot and there was a lot of racism in my dad's side of the family as well. Most of my dad's siblings would sneer and make immigration remarks toward my mom inadvertently. Between that and the feuding my parents had at home, mom crying and screaming wishing that she could go back to Costa Rica, and dad getting frustrated with her, left me in quite a confused state of belonging and what life should look like. I did become a Christian in the midst of all this though at some youth convention I ended up at. No big deal though really, or so it seemed, because my life stayed the same. Don't get me wrong, my life wasn't that bad, perhaps incredibly awkward at times but nothing like a lot of people go through and have to tolerate at home.

A New Season

     Halfway through my sixth grade year of school my dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, after switching from a doctor who told him that it was simply his age that had been making his body hurt and feel different. Although his symptoms were not normal and he refused to run any sort of test. We went to Costa Rica for a month or two visiting my mom's family that summer and he was absolutely miserable reading up on how to deal with this form of cancer and what life was going to look like for him from here on out. When we returned home he was taken in for more testing and was diagnosed with multiple myloma. This is an incurable bone cancer. My dad was going to die. From that appointment in mid-summer he was given until Christmas or so to live. The stage four cancer was already brutally destroying his bones and infecting all of his bodily tissue. As we began to even then mourn his death expecting the worst wondering how mom and I would make it, Christmas rolled by and he was still here and going strong. He was then put on a new kind of chemo that was in testing. Being on that for over a year, I got to see the very worst a persons immune system can look. Understanding that someone who's normal healthy weight was around 170 was down to 129 for a while looks like death walking. As time went on mom and I become brokenhearted and running out of faith. God wasn't answering our prayers in healing him so it looked as if we were on our own.

What's next?

     Those was the big question for mom and I, "how much longer can this last?" or "Are we ever going to make it through this?". You see, as time went further down the road of this digression, he began to lose who he was. His mind going from being a manufacturing engineer for Boeing, to being someone who forgets where he is and whether he had taken a pill already or not. This being said, unless you have lived with someone who has bone cancer very long it's hard to understand the kind of agony that goes with it. To wake up at four in the morning to the sound of a man with a high pain tolerance screaming in writhing pain was normal. Mom had forgotten to change his fetonal pain patches of high dosage one night and so the pain was out of control. He ingested 9 loritab painkiller pills before even getting a handle on it if that puts it in perspective. To have to sit on the floor hiding food to eat while watching him because his throat had gotten so weak that he couldn't eat most solid food because he would choke, and if he saw the food he would want it. In the midst of agony and progression toward death, I had happened upon someone who had also lost their father to cancer and experienced what I was experiencing. She was murdered by car crash, being in the hospital while suffering internal trauma, I got to talk to her all week because I was home sick with walking pneumonia and quarantined to my room. I was able to talk to her until the moment she passed away. This 19 year old death was the first of many events that would transpire that year for me. Following it was a car accident where someone hit mom and I and put our car out of commission. Our roof was leaking, the washer and dryer broke down. Our refrigerator had a blown a fuse, water was leaking into and rotting the wood in the garage. This all was leading up to potentially the worst event of it all to me.

Christmas Cheer

      The Christmas of my 9th grade year, He had been sleeping through the usual practice of opening presents. This was the Christmas of a large snow storm and my mom and I were essentially trapped in the house. He woke up at about 10 in the morning hallucinating as he often did and was talking to his mom who was deceased and crying. In all of his wailing he wasn't able to get up by himself, because the cancer had made him to weak. Mom and I actually had to help him up to take him to a porta-pot he had to use. Anyway, he hated life so much at this point he was trying to get us to give him the bottles of pills so he could kill himself. He wanted to call all of his family to tell them goodbye before he said this, and so we let him. As he told all of his family I'm dying and i'll be gone soon my heart completely broke. As he was continuing to ask for the pills, he then reached the conclusion that without any pills he would also die more quickly and so he refused to take any. Mom and I knew that this would just leave him in indescribable agony, along with, extreme constipation, anxiety attacks and the like. It took several hours of trying to convince him that I was his son and that he shouldn't leave yet so that he would take the medicine which eventually he did. This raised the greatest uproar in my own mind, questioning whether my own quality of life was worth it.

Where is my God

     To be quite frank, after all the things I had to see and the daily picture of death I had to become ok with, I truly began to question what the nature of God is. I had no question that he was real because I had experienced him myself. Going to church by myself for four years, I learned to worship God because I really didn't have anything to lose. I started asking all the hard deep questions when I was still young and in the middle of this trauma. What is the purpose of life, what is faith, what is the point of prayer, is everything predestined, what IS God's will. These questions plagued my mind, and so I spent hours upon hours fighting God and trying to understand him. Trying to understand why this happened to me and my family. Trying to answer if God is just making me have to check if my dad is breathing every time I walk in his room and he is asleep on his hospital bed in our house. I found that there truly was no hope or peace, or joy without God. Because there came points where I just didn't know if I could make it, feeling so alone and completely dead inside. I felt like a ghost that people could see through. Sick of putting up a mask for everyone around me, at school, church, and any sort of public event. There came moments crying out to God asking him to just take my life. I had a 40 day period that I was severely depressed upon arriving home. Contemplating walking down my gravel driveway and never coming home was common. I had no peace until I came to a point where I was completely broken and crying and on my knees asking God to give me a moment of peace in all the chaos. He would. He had never left me, regardless of how much I fought him and yelled and wished he would do something, this was something I had to walk to walk through. When I called on him, He was always there. Sitting on the ground looking at a dying man who used to take care of me, whose flesh was bruised and torn from merely picking him up off of the floor when he fell, listening to him wheeze as he could barely breathe, I was ok. I had peace in Christ. His love for me was enough, and because I understood what it meant to see pain even in my misery God gave me the opportunity to minister to others and love them. This truly meant something for them, knowing that I was going through something like this and could still be ok and worshiping God, then they felt that they could make it to with God's help.

God is Good

To go through something lasting, painful, and significant doesn't mean God has abandoned you. It just means that his world is filled with sin and crap is gonna hit the fan sometimes. God never leaves or abandons you when you call. It may feel like it, but he doesn't. I wasn't saved in the middle of my time of trial, but I learned who God was and found answers to those hard questions I asked. This is a very summarized version of my testimony in an attempt to have brevity, but through everything I saw and experienced, in the midst of it, I could see God was there. In hindsight, life never really was so overwhelming I couldn't handle it. In my weakness I needed God, and when I realized that I really couldn't do it on my own, that my mind will and emotions really wasn't enough to get me through this God truly shined. My testimony is one of hope. That although over 4 years of watching death is enough to break any man's countenance God is bigger then it, and it really won't last forever. God is good, praise him in all things, because without the hope of His love everything is lost. I am praying for anyone who reads this and needs encouragement. Be blessed.

Grace more abundant

Grace in perspective

     God's grace is not something that we can really comprehend in terms of anything man has done, or even aspires to do. God created us knowing that we would fall short, and that our free will would be our greatest downfall.

     We know this because God had a predetermined plan for his son to die on the cross to give all of us sinners a second chance. We can define grace as, a free, predetermined gift that of which cannot be diminished or made greater, neither forced upon us or earned.

     Grace is not earned, merely accepted or refused (Romans 3:23-24). Having something given to us that gives us freedom from the bondage of this world in our spirit is incredibly difficult to fully grasp.

 We are not bound by sin any longer, we can choose something better, although all fall short (Romans 3:23). we do not have to live by this world's standard of sin and death any longer (Romans 5).

Peace and Joy through Grace

     Because of the acceptance we choose in Christ, we have become holy and can experience the greatest conceivable joy. The greatest conceivable joy comes from knowing the greatest conceivable being, which is God.

 Grace is empowering, because it comes by love. We can have overwhelming peace knowing that we could have been the most vile, ill-reputed human, and still are loved and accepted into God's family if we so choose.

 When we can come to terms with ourselves in accepting that we really cannot do ANYTHING to make God love us or accept us, and that we are fully paid for by the blood of Christ, then we can have peace and joy in any circumstance.

 If we can can mentally reach the point that Paul reaches regarding grace, knowing that whether he is being stoned, put in prison, or persecuted by his own followers, God still loves him more then anyone could ever imagine, and has freed him of the old self, then we know the love of God.

absolute truth in a relative world.

     For some reason our culture has passed on from a time of intellectualism and of authoritative unquestionable truth into an era of relativism. The world has moved from a perspective of being adamant about their own views being unquestionably correct to a place where it seems all religions and belief systems are accepted as sufficient and tolerable. I'd hate to try to throw out there that logic is partially the answer, although I believe it is because man has fallen into a place of non-logic, but it really is just a matter of the heart as are most problems. We have given up even as Christians these days  to refute that abortion, same sex marriage, and even be bold enough to say pre-marital sex is not good. Christians have become a bunch of pansies and  refuse to say something that is truth because they may offend someone. It does say that we must express truth in love, which I agree with, HOWEVER to not even make your position on the issue known out of fear of offense is ridiculous.

     This post-modern time we exist in has had it's affect on the Christian populations views of absolutism in a detrimental way as well. Christians these days are being completely ambiguous and hypocritical to believe in the Bible or even claim Christianity, and not believe the Bible is absolute truth, or to believe there is no absolute truth for that matter. This is becoming a real issue. If we cannot fundamentally believe in something how can we base our life around it?

Somebody love me.

As a culture have began to lose our self esteem and our innate sense of purpose. Man looks for companionship and a sense of belonging, this is undeniable. Love is what is sought after, and is more passionately pursued then anything else in the world. Anywhere that it could possibly be found, regardless of what it takes from us and what it makes us.

 This world has corrupted love in its purest form for so long that I'm not entirely sure we know what it really is anymore.

"Somebody love me" is the underlying statement in a heart expressed in the form of seeking others affections. Well OF COURSE IT IS! some would say. Really take a moment and think about it though, to compromise any presupposition has become acceptable in our world for love.

 Man will do drugs, have sex, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill at times so that others would accept and if they are lucky "love" them. To try to find acceptance in a world full of rejection and death is something so hard to find genuinely. Because of this man will do WHATEVER it takes at crucible points in life.

Where is this all going? Ya I want love and acceptance..so what!? What's the kicker, that's the punch-line here. There exists something to offer containing objective truth about yourself and reality.

 Yes, I am a Christian writer and I offer you the most realistic perspective as I can. Through a Christian perspective to this world issue, and what I believe to be the only true solution to this problem.

Christ died so that we may go to heaven, right? I mean that's the preached gospel and why a lot of people may have become Christians, because eternity in hell can be avoided by saying a few simple words according to the eccentric religion.

No, I'm gonna tell you now that, that is a lie. Christ did NOT die so that we can go to heaven. He died for a more noble cause then that. The question must then be asked, what in the world could possibly be more noble then that?

 Christ died so that man could have and be in a personal relationship with the one true God again. The by-product of this is that if you do happen to choose him you will go to heaven, but this is not why. Christ loved you so much, that out of his free will he became a bridge over the abyss sin has created so that we can get to know the greatest conceivable being.

        Habakkuk 2:14 For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea

How does all this relate to someone loving me? If you could only imagine the most amazing unreachable person to you in the world (an actor, actress?), now imagine them seeking to be your friend and trying to teach you everything they can and be a part of every aspect of your life. You have just created a small fiction which in a way represents how we should see God.

The creator of the IDEA of LOVE desires you to be intimate and close to Him. Someone who could never leave or forsake you, someone who knows every evil thing you have done or thought while no one was watching and still has the most captivating desire to choose you to be his son or daughter.

 This is a great comfort if you can wrap your mind around it. I'm not here to say that you need the Bible memorized to know God. Abraham who birthed the nation that became Israel so to speak, walked and talked with God in a relationship with no guide to show him what to do.

Genesis 12:1 The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land that I will show you.

 Now I do want to emphasize, being in a relationship with God will not keep you from sinning, people from dying, or "bad" things from happening, but it gives us purpose and hope regardless of what does happen.

 Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in things hoped for and assurance about what we do not see

 Since the world is fallen, sin will happen, but to be close to the one who desires the greatest purpose for your life, that is something we can hold onto. Please, read the Bible though, We can see who God is through it and how incredible the nature of his love is.

Understanding love in a self pleasure seeking world.

When we think of love, a person that we are attracted to, or an ideal, on object, an activity, a savior, a personified inanimate object comes to mind. I can't say that, this all isn't what comes to my mind, but if i think about love objectively, something else prevails. How can you define love in one word? I believe by studying the  bible, philosophers who seemed to have it right, people that understand life, it seems to come down to selflessness. I can't think of one instance where love isn't selfless or where it shouldn't be. The qualities of love follow selflessness. I had a friend define love one time in such a different way I could never forget. He defined it as toward people specifically "the act of trying to help someone reach their full potential within your own limits for the sake of love alone." That is such an interesting definition. It has several interesting dynamics to recognize.  To love is an action, and a perspective. As that same friend told me, you have to be able to love with your motives and with you affections. Now this means to understand the purpose and concept of true love, id est, the different types of love, and also be able to effectively convey it with your affections not doing it for personal game or for anything other then the same of God's glory and love itself.

To be competent in what love is it takes an understanding of the four different types of love in the original Greek. Check it out sometime. Read Chapter 13 of Corinthians. Even if your not sure about your religion, Mahatmat Ghandi who was in no way Christian agreed with most of Christ's and the apostles teaching, give em a shot. Don't let a Christian you know, define Christianity. Check it.