Life w/God
How is Life With God Possible?
Here is the rest of the story.
God has rules for us too, like He did for Adam and Eve. He wants us to live and to love like He does. We can summarize God's rules like this:
1) Love and honor God; 2) Love everyone else.
God spelled out these basic rules in His Word to us many years ago. They're called the Ten Commandments. They are meant for us also, and they give us very good directions for life with God..
We have a problem. If we don't follow every one of God's rules perfectly, it's always the end of life with God. He requires us to be holy just like He is. But no one is perfect, except God. We all break the rules, like Adam and Eve. We deserve to die.
But God's love never ends. From the beginning, He wanted us to do life with Him. So He has made a way for us to start over and continue to enjoy life with Him, even though we don't deserve it. Here is what He has done.
God the Father asked His Son to come to earth and pay for our mistakes. The Son agreed. He was born as a human baby, to His mother, Mary, on that first Christmas. He was named Jesus. It means "Savior."
Jesus grew up and became a teacher. He showed us what God is like by teaching, by healing the sick, and even by bringing back to life some people who had died. He taught us more about God and His rules.
But the church leaders in those days hated Jesus. The people were ignoring them and following Jesus. Those leaders were bullies, looking out only for themselves. They had Jesus arrested and executed. He was nailed
to a cross and He died there. It was horrible.
The Sacrifice of the Fittest
Now we can have life with God again.
After three days in a grave, Jesus rose to life again. He met with His chosen followers for about a month. Then He went back to heaven to be with His Father.
But because Jesus paid for all of our wrong behavior, we can enjoy life with Him. If we ask Him, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to give us new life. The Spirit helps us see God's love, and God's plan. We become fit for life with God. We can begin to love God and others, like God does. We can sacrifice ourselves to help others.
Evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. But God's plan is the opposite of Evolution. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we don't have to worry about our own survival. God is caring for us forever. We can love and care for others, like Jesus showed us. This is life with God. We might call it...
sacrifice of the fittest.
Jesus was the most per- fect (the most "fit") per- son who ever lived, but He did not survive. He gave up the life He had enjoyed with His Father. He sacri-ficed His own life for us.
And His Father accepted that sacrifice to pay for all the wrong that humans have ever done.
Learning to know God
It's easy to begin doing life with God. Just ask Him. He created us, and He is actually our Father also. He wants to hear from us. Just say, "Father, I want to learn to know You, and do life with you. I need your love and forgiveness. Please help me."
God tells us about Himself in the Bible, as we've seen with Creation. If you don't have a Bible, you can find one on the web. For example, the book of Psalms, in the middle of the Bible, tells a lot about life with God. You can read about it at biblegateway.com.
There you can also look at any part of the Bible. It comes in different versions. The New International Reader's Version (NIRV) is easy to read.
What is God like?
God is quite different from humans. First of all, God is a Spirit. He has no physical body like we have. He cannot be seen unless He makes Himself visible. And He can be present anywhere and everywhere, as He chooses. So He can be right beside us even though we can't see Him.
Secondly, God is holy. He is perfect. He does nothing wrong. He always keeps His promises.
God also knows everything. He knows each of us, where we are, and what we are doing. He knows how to help us all through our life. He also knows everything about nature, because He designed it and created it.
God has the power to do anything He wants... absolutely anything. We say He is almighty. And everything He does is for our good, and to overcome evil. In fact, the
Bible says that God is love. And the stories in the Bible show us how this is true.
God is three persons, but they are one God. We call this a Trinity. There is God the Father, who rules over everything that exists. His Son, Jesus, rules with Him, and honors His Father in every way, even giving up His life for us. The third person is God the Holy Spirit. He is the one who comes to give us our new life with God, as we explained above.
These three - Father, Son, and Spirit - live in heaven and love each other perfectly. They also love us completely. They want us to enjoy life with them and with each other forever.
And they want us to help others come to know them, and to enjoy life with them.
This is Life With God
When I give up trying to be Number 1 and ask God to let me do life with Him, it changes everything. Because of what Jesus did, I can begin to feel how God loves and cares for me. And the more I learn about Him, the more I am able to love and care for others like He does.
Life does not have to be a matter of survival of the fittest at all. Life with God is about the sacrifice of the fittest, like Jesus showed us. It's about LOVE. God gives Himself to us, and we give ourselves to God and to others. This is God's goal from Creation.
A follower of Jesus named John tells about this in one of the letters he wrote. It's in the Bible, near the end.
John says...
Here’s how we know that we are joined to God and he to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit. The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. We have seen it and are witnesses to it. God lives in anyone who agrees that Jesus is the Son of God. This kind of person remains joined to God...
...God is love. Anyone who leads a life of love is joined to God. And God is joined to them.
1 John 4:13-16
A boy named David
In the first part of the Bible, the Old Testament, a boy named David grew very close to God. As a teenager, he took care of his father's flock of sheep far from home. He had lots of time to think about God.
Because he learned to trust God, he was able to win a battle against a giant named Goliath. (Read the story.) Then throughout his life, he wrote songs and hymns about life with God .
In the earlier pages of this web site some links take you to Psalm 1 and Psalm 23. Another Psalm that helps us think a whole lot about life with God is Psalm 139. Click on it and see if you agree.
To do life with God...
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Ask God to take you into His family, to give you life with Him, and to protect you from Satan.
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Discover and develop the talents and abilities that God has given you.
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Use your gifts to honor God, your parents and all those whom God has given to guide and support you.
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Trust God to love and care for you so that you can love and care for all those around you, all through life.
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Trust God also to lead you into a career that will honor and serve Him and others.
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Worship God each week. Thank Him for His love and blessings, and hear again from His Word about His Plan for life with Him, forever.