Eternal Life

Believing the right things about Jesus isn't enough. You're not adopted as God's child until you confess and turn away from your wrongdoing and receive the freely offered gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased with his death on the cross. Until you do that, you'll always be on the outside looking in.  Lee Strobel

What do you think of when you hear the word eternal?  Forever, unending, perpetual, once begun continuing perpetually into eternity.  The life we live on earth is not unending.  Adam and Eve made a choice in the Garden of Eden and that choice took away our chance at eternal life with God.

The amazing thing about God’s love is that he gave each of us an opportunity to use our “Get Out of Jail Free” card.  It is available to anyone who chooses to use it.  I am not sure why we start believing that we will live forever on this earth.  We accumulate stuff like we will live forever here. 

I have been baptized twice in my lifetime.  I know; right about now you’re thinking, “What, you didn’t think it took the first time?”  My grandfather baptized me the first time when I was twelve years old.  At the time I knew right from wrong but I didn’t really understand Jesus’ sacrifice for me.  As I grew older and life threw itself at me; I began to understand that there was more to being baptized than being lowered into the water.  God loved me enough to send His only Son, (who was without sin), to die in my place so that I could be reunited with Him one day.  When I finally understood the implications of that I broke down and cried.  I finally got it.  For someone to die for me so that I could live for eternity with our Heavenly Father was the ultimate sacrifice.

Eternal life means something different for me now.  It means I was reborn into a new life in Christ.  Eternal life means the stuff I accumulate here on earth will one day be gone.  It won’t matter.  The amount of money I make, the car I drive or the house I live in will not matter.  What will matter is where my heart is and whose I am for eternity.  God is amazing!! 

    

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I am a sinner who fails over and over again.  I praise You for loving me enough to send Your Son to die on the cross for a sinner like me.  I don’t deserve that grace but I will grab it with both hands and cling to You.  You saved me and I am eternally grateful.         

Scripture:  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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”  John 3:16-21