Question #3: God is pleading with us. What is God asking us to do right now?
Hello, friend! Welcome back to the third God’s Wish For You Bible study. Please take a moment to pray your own prayer for God’s guidance and read on to discover a new life in Christ.
There is a way that leads to everlasting life, and it is through Christ. He is the sacrificial Lamb slain for our sins.
He wants a relationship with you. Today you will find out how you can help Jesus restore the Universe. This challenge begins right in your heart. There is no question that restoration of the world will happen. The only question is: Who will be there in heaven? Our part is to be the best that we can be, led by His Spirit, and this will allow others to see Jesus in us. Inspire the world with the love of Christ in your heart. Draw others to Him.
Jesus wants us to take on His character by following Him. What is His character? And would you be willing to take on His character if He were to make it possible? Read on and the Holy Spirit will help you to make this decision. In study #1 we learned the essence of God is love. We also learned that God wants to save us for eternal life with Him in heaven. Today we will learn more about God’s wishes for us.
He made human children to often look and act like their parents. Children will imitate everything they see their parents do. They follow mommy and daddy and want to play with everything mommy and daddy touch. They want to be like the man or woman they see in front of them. Should it be the same with God and us, His children?
To know Jesus is to admire Him the same way. He is perfect and holy, wise and true. He is honest and righteous, zealous and loving. He prays. He works to provide His children happiness. He teaches, heals, and restores. He has the potential to get us through any situation and any adversity. He frees us from addiction, illness, harassment, and crushing emotions. He uses truth and light to do all these things. There is nothing He cannot do! Would you want to be like Him?
Now we can turn to Him and be like Him. How? Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” John 14:15. This was the path Jesus took to lead a life that was perfect in the sight of His Father. When we accept the blood of Christ in payment for our wrongs, we are saved. Then the Ten Commandment path will lead us in Christ’s way, and our obedience will show our gratitude for His saving us. These sacred laws also lead to holiness.
What is holiness, anyway? I will explain: If the definition of “sin is lawlessness,” (1 John 3:4) then holiness is the opposite: following God’s laws and reflecting the image of God. We must do this to be holy: We must follow God’s commandments out of love, and we must repent of our sins. We must also believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins and we must accept His sacrifice. Then we are righteous. Righteousness is different than self-righteousness. Righteousness is a good thing. It means we live in a sinless and blameless way. Our old sins are covered by the blood of Christ and we simply commit to living without sin. It starts with a decision.
What is repentance? We may sin and break Gods law by accident, but if we do, there is a plan: We can repair the damage done by admitting our wrong to God right away and making amends for the wrong, if possible. We ask God forgiveness. After this repentance (sorrow for sin) we are righteous again, because God has forgiven us. This will work as long as we are genuinely sorry for our sins. It means that if we could go back and do it all over again, we would behave differently, following the commandment. This is true repentance. The Lord knows our heart.
Christ is pleading for us to cleanse ourselves from sin and be holy, as He is holy. There are reasons for this. The reasons are very profound: Sin is a disease upon our planet. Sin has vandalized God’s work. The only way to begin healing, is to choose to stop sinning. The final restoration of the world will be after Jesus comes, but restoration begins in us now. This is part of our transformation that happens after we choose Christ as our Savior.
God’s works were perfect when He created them. Adam and Eve were in a perfect Garden of Eden, a paradise God intended for all of us. But when Eve listened to Satan and decided she wanted to have her eyes opened to be like God, she desired God’s divine place in the Universe. She thought to raise herself up to be a god, but she ended up losing so much! She disobeyed her Father by eating the forbidden fruit. (Sin is lawlessness, and both Adam and Eve sinned.) That was when Satan got voted into the Earth. The enemy came into our camp and has not left since. Satan and his fallen angels have performed destruction upon the Earth and in our lives ever since then. This was not God’s will, but because of the sins of man, we have a diseased planet.
God could no longer walk with Adam and Eve. His glory (His great brightness) was now a danger to them. People with sin cannot draw near the glory of God. We have been separated from God ever since. The Garden of Eden was now lost. But the Father had a plan. He sent His Son Jesus to rescue mankind from eternal death, which came into the world by lawlessness. Jesus left behind His glory in heaven, so He could come down to Earth as a baby, born of Mary. He came to die for sinners, and to take the punishment we deserved. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” -Romans 6:23. When He died on the cross, His blood did indeed cover our sins! His blood made a future everlasting heaven possible.
Jesus looks forward to the day when He and the Father can live again with redeemed humans. Some day the Universe will be restored to this wonderful reunion! Restoration involves a return to the sacred laws of God. Everyone will follow them, because they are the path to happiness! By keeping God’s commandments now, we will be readying ourselves for the restoration of the Universe into the blueprint the Creator has designed! Because our old sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, we will be able to stand before God, even with his bright glory!
Would you consider keeping God’s commandments? Would you do this to please God and help Him restore the Universe? Are you willing to trust that the Ten Commandments will lead to your greater happiness?
The Lord is ready to receive you. He is eagerly waiting for your decision. He says, “I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters.” -2 Corinthians 6:17-18. Imagine the embrace of the long-awaited union with our Lord!
For your reference, here are the Ten Commandments- found in Exodus 20. (They are perhaps longer than you expect, because man had shortened them for convenience):
“And God spoke all these words, saying:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
End quote. (Italicized words were added by the translator, to make the sentence make more sense)
These laws are written in our hearts by God. They are the basis of the human conscience, which guides us to know right and wrong. God gives us the power to keep the law. It is completely possible! It has been done before by Noah, Lot, Abraham, and many others. They were called righteous in the Bible.
A prayer for you:
God, thank You for Your precious laws which help me to know Your will for me. Please help me to keep all of Your laws. Please give me the power and the desire to do Your will always, in all things. Help me to be ready for heaven. Help me to succeed and to please You in all my ways. Amen!