“I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”
John 14: 6
12 “Look, I AM coming soon! My reward is with Me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22: 12-13
Pastors Noreen & Henry Kevern
Knowing Myself In The Only True God and In Jesus
And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent.
John 17:3
Who are you? What is your makeup? Do you belong to yourself or to something or someone else? Do you see yourself as how God sees you? Or do you see yourself as how the devil controls you? How you see yourself and how you live your life is important to know. If you do not know who you are and whose you are, you will wallow through life without any clear direction and will never be sure of your path.
Let’s walk through this finding and searching through our lives. First things first, you are a child of God. It matters not whether you believe in God, or if you are unsure of yourself or if you are locked into some form of sin and feel as if you cannot escape. What matters is that no matter what, God loves you. He will not force you to accept Him or take you out of your sin but He will always place before you opportunities that will show His love for you if only you are willing to look for them. Too often we are so caught up in our lives, our jobs, our families, the things of the world, our work, and so many other things, that we forget our first and most important place for our lives and miss what God has placed before us. When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was He said: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
God is love. Jesus said: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command” (John 15:12-14). You see, our walk in life is this: To be identified with God and our lives to be lived out in what Jesus taught us. Jesus said: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:25-27) We worry too much. Worry is a sin because it takes us away from God and the devil uses worry to create stress and despair and discord among us and drives us along a path that God does not want us to take. You say: “But how can I stop worrying? Do you know what will happen if I don’t worry? I hate my job but I need to have money to live on. I hate my life and I worry about food on the table and what I am going to wear. How can I not worry?” Satan loves to hear this. There is so much sadness out there. Satan has robbed us of our joy. But we can stop the worry in our lives.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he said: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:17-19). Read that again. Write this out and stick it on your refrigerator and work it out in your life. How, you ask? Keep asking God to fill you with His Spirit. You see, our whole lives are to be placed into God’s hands and to allow Him to work out in our lives His glorious will for our lives. We mess up our lives enough. It’s time to give God control and let Him fill our lives with the glorious inheritance that is ours. We cannot know God and the Way, the Truth and the Life of Jesus unless we learn by reading God’s Word and working out in our lives our Salvation in Christ. What do I mean by that? We have to spend time daily with God. His Word, the Bible, is filled with His desire for us. Think of the Bible like this: B(asic) I(nstructions) B(efore) L(eaving) E(arth). You see the Bible is our instruction book given to us by God, revealed to us through ordinary people that God brought out extraordinary faith through the trials that these people went through. The people in the Bible have gone through trials like you are facing. It is in reading that we learn how faith was lost and found. God wants you to find the faith that He has implanted in you. He wants you to learn to trust Him with your life. He wants you to know if you are brought into some trial, into some sin, that He has faith in you to know that you will get through your trial and that you will find the door or window open to escape your sin or to get through the trial. But you must choose to be enlightened by God by opening up your heart and to listen to Him. You have to choose to want to have a relationship with God.
Paul said: “But because of His great love for us, God, Who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5). We are dead in our sins, but the devil keeps us ignorant of this. Satan wants you to suffer; he wants to win you over to his side so that you will lose what Jesus died for. Sin is not pretty, but the devil sure knows how to make it that way. Sin controls so many people and they don’t realize it. They go through life without joy and feel dead inside. There are those who have willing let go of their salvation and follow the devil willingly. There are those who turn their backs to God and live their lives in the sinful nature of Satan. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). If you are living out your life in sin, you lose life. Jesus said: “It is done. I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (Revelation 21:6-8).
So knowing yourself and whose you are is important. You must make a choice in your life, to accept God into your life or to accept Satan into your life. Are you living a life of sin? You can change. Come to God and talk with Him. Tell God that you are sorry for sinning and that you want to change your life. Tell Him you are weak but that you know He is strong. Ask God for His strength each day and He will fill you with it. It will not be easy to overcome, but you can. It will take strength that can only be drawn from a relationship with our Lord. Learn from God and He will guide you. Jesus came so that we might have life, life eternal with Him. God does not want to lose anyone, but He does not force you to accept Him. He wants you to willingly choose to come to Him. Jesus said: “Behold, I AM coming soon! My reward is with Me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Revelation 22:12-15). Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Faith is something that we feel, we believe, even when there is nothing to physically prove what we are saying; it is knowing that what we believe is real because we have faith.
God is calling you by name. Listen to Him and accept Him. Walk with God and learn from Him and He will lead you into life everlasting with Him. Don’t keep on following the devil and be left outside, burning in the sulfur. Wash your robe, your body of sin, be reborn in Spirit and truth and throw away the old man of sin that was your life. Put on Christ and live out your life in His mercy and grace. Walk the walk and talk the talk. It is up to you to choose and God is asking you to choose Him in your life. We read in the letter of James: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, Who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (James 1:2-8).
What we face in life brings us closer to who we are and what we believe. If we do not endure the testing, we will not be purified. We have to overcome the sin and change the person who we were and become the person who God knows you are if only you will choose to be. God wants you to come to Him and ask Him to teach you. His Spirit will live in you if you accept Him into your life and learn from Him. You have to believe and not doubt, because if you have any doubt Satan will come and toss you back and forth. But if you stay strong in your faith, no matter what is going on in your life, you will get through it and go on into a great reward that you could imagine. Trust in God and let Him guide you from a child faith into a mature faith. Let God finish His work in you.
If you are ready to begin a relationship with God and make Jesus your Lord and Savior pray this prayer or just talk with God with your own words.
Father, I am at the end of this selfish life I have made and I need you. I don’t know what to do. All I know is that I need you. I’ve made a mess of my life. I confess my sins. Thank you for dying on the cross and taken my punishment for my sins. Thank you for forgiving me of my sins. I am redeemed! I make you the Lord and Savior my life. Amen.
