1 John 3:21-23- My dear friends, if our hearts do not make us feel guilty, we can come without fear into God's presence. And God gives us what we ask for because we obey God's commands and do what pleases him. This is what God commands: that we believe in this Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love each other, just as he commanded.
So here we go with my first blog entry....
As I look back on the year that was 2010, I tried to sum up the feelings and experiences that I had in one word. It did not take me long to settle on a perfect description...blessed. For me, 2010 has been a year of great blessings, I have obtained memories and friends that I foresee lasting a lifetime. These people and the experiences that I have encountered have been life-changing and I would not trade them for the world.
Soon after settling on the word blessed as an appropriate description of the past 365 days, I began to think what God says about blessings in the Bible. I came across the above passage, 1 John 3:21-23. Now I have read through 1 John a few times, but these verses had never stood out to me very much; however, at this point in my life, and hopefully for the rest of my life, these words have and will have a lasting impact. Verse 21 says "if our hearts do not make us feel guilty, we can come without fear into God's presence.." Now right off the bat I'm thinking, I have no guilt, no shame, no reason to fear God...but the opposite is actually true. I have sin that should be beyond forgivable, sin that I keep committing over and over again after I have repeatedly yearned for forgiveness. Sometimes I think that one of these days God is going to get tired of me and just give up and say, "I gave you enough chances, you are out of mulligans." But that's not how God works. I recently was talking to a friend of mine as she was reading through the book of Jeremiah. She said that she wondered why God kept forgiving the people of Israel. These "chosen people" were a bunch of complainers. They only seemed to love God when He was obviously present (raining down bread from Heaven, helping them win battles with their puny army in comparison to others, and all those times when the presence of God is just undeniable). Other times when God was present, but choosing to work in what may seem like less miraculous ways, his people were quick to stray, but yet he always forgave them. We can thank God that He never changes and therefore still works on this same principle. When we ask for his forgiveness, we can be guilt free and come humbly into His presence without fear of His rejection or wrath.
Now all of the above was not actually the part of the verse that hit me the most (although I just wrote a short novel about it). The part that hit me about this past year was verse 22, "And God gives us what we ask for because we obey God's commands and do what pleases him." My initial thought is "wow! With all these blessings, I must be super pleasing to God. What would He do without me?" But how self centered is that?!?! The question "what would He do without me?" has a simple answer...He would go on. He would still be God and He doesn't rely on me for anything, He's God for heavens sake! I thought about it and the verse says that God gives us what we ask for, and, when I thought about it, I rarely ever ask God things for myself. When I pray it is usually more thanking God for what He has done and not asking Him to do more. It hit me that I do not put ideas into God's mind as if I were a child asking my parents for whatever birthday present I desired. God already knows what I need and want. I have found that even though asking Him cannot hurt, He is ultimately going to do what is best for the advancement of His kingdom. And that when He gives you blessings, He will often give you better things than you could have ever imagined or hoped for.
So back to the unending cycle of sin-->guilt-->repent-->God forgives-->sin-->guilt-->etc, what is so pleasing about that? Maybe God does not do anything based on my actions. If that were the case, I would be in a ditch somewhere, lonely, sad, sinful, and lost. And this is where verse 23 steps in to explain the rest of the story. "This is what God commands: that we believe in this Son, Jesus Christ, and that we love each other, just as he commanded." It's not my actions or anything I can do to please God, but He tells us exactly what we must do to please Him. Some people think that this is up for interpretation and that there are many ways to God, but God puts it so that even a small child can understand it. Believe in Jesus, and love each other. God knows His children well and for this reason makes it dummy-proof. So belief in Jesus, that's part one. I'm positive that I have that part covered (...but if you don't see Acts 16:31 and Romans 10:9). Then there's the second commandment, "love one another." A simple but hard commandment. One of my resolutions for 2011 is to not have any enemies from my point of view. If someone hates me, I can't change that, but I can change myself and I want the love of God too be seen in my life. So why does God want us to "love one another?" ...Because he first loved us. At least that's what the Bible says. But here's the way that I look at it. We are friends of God, and would you want two of your friends to hate each other? How awkward and unsatisfying is it when you have to worry about two of your friends breaking out into a cat fight or you have to restrict what you can do because you have to keep two certain friends away from each other. Now multiply your friends by 6 billion, and you may find yourself in God's predicament. Isn't just easier if we all love each other (I feel like I'm starting to sound like a hippie). But seriously, I challenge you to make the same resolution as I have. No enemies. If someone hates you, love them because God commanded it.
So here's the end of my first blog entry, if you read it all the way to this point, I commend you. I feel like I wrote A LOT, and I highly doubt future blogs will be this long haha.
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