Everyone Has A Story, This Is Mine

MY NAME IS SETH. I grew up in a Christian home, attending Sunday School regularly. Because of this, I thought that I must be a Christian. I thought that going to church every Sunday and having a Christian family made me all right with God—I was automatically going to heaven. However, in the year 2005 when I was about 7 years old, I found a church gospel tract in our living room that looked like a comic strip. Only in the past year had I learned how to read, and I enjoyed sounding out the sentences to this unfamiliar comic strip. As I said before, I thought that I was already on my way to heaven. So, when I read about how my natural life automatically led me to hell, I hit a mental barrier. I could not get past the fact that I thought I was going to heaven, but this little comic strip said that I was going to hell unless a change took place—a change that I did not understand yet. I took the tract to my mom and asked her to explain it to me. We sat down and she read through it all again, explaining what each scene meant. Now I understood! My upbringing and my good behavior could not pay for my sins. I needed a Savior. In our kitchen, I got saved by putting my trust in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His promise to save all who call upon His name.  In my family, I was not the only one who thought that I was “Okay” with God. Some of my siblings had prayed a prayer but did not understand what it meant to get saved. For some of them, it wasn’t until they were college-age that they understood that repeating a prayer did not save them. Only by putting one’s faith in what Jesus did can a person be saved. WHAT EXACTLY DID JESUS DO?It is really hard to understand a book if you start it in the middle. Similarly, to understand what Jesus did in the middle of the Bible, we have to understand what took place at the beginning. First, God created the whole universe in a literal six days, then rested on the seventh day. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:1-2). Among the creation of planets, stars, sun, moon, earth, trees, herbs, animals, birds, and aquatic beings, God also made Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The first commandment ever given was to Adam: “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). God’s creation started out very good. There was no sickness or death. Unfortunately, Satan (a created angel that started out good) decided to rebel against God. He became prideful and also drew away other angels to rebel with him (Ezekiel 28:13-19; Revelation 12:3-4). Satan came from heaven to roam the earth, seeking whom he could destroy because of his hatred towards God (1 Peter 5:8). The devil deceived Eve into breaking God’s command. She ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then Eve gave the fruit to Adam, who was with her, and he ate also (Genesis chapter 3).  When God gave that first command to Adam, the result of disobedience was death. Now death affects all: animals, plants, and people. The sin of Adam brought the curse of death upon all his descendants. God told Adam that in the same day he sinned he would die. There are three kinds of death:  Spiritual death is separation from God. Everybody is born dead to God because of Adam’s curse (Ephesians 2:1). Physical death is the separation of our spirit from our body and occurs at the end of one’s life on earth (Hebrews 9:27). Eternal death, also called the “second death,” is separation from all of God’s goodness in the Lake of Fire, where people are tormented and judged for their sins forever (Revelation 20:11-15). All three of these deaths are automatic (were it not for God’s mercy) because of the sin nature and curse passed down from Adam to us. On top of this, we all personally sin as well, further proving that we deserve to die. Romans 6:23a says, “For the wages of sin is death.”  Following Adam and Eve’s disobedience, God began to give humanity other laws. Many folks have heard of the ten commandments. But there are multitudes of other laws. In fact, God’s laws were so many and so extensive that we could not keep them all even if we tried. And that’s the point! God did not give us His laws in order for us to try earning our way to heaven. He gave us His laws to demonstrate His holiness and show us how we never could earn our way to heaven. The laws of God were not given for us to work our way to heaven, but to show us our need for a Savior. Romans 3:20 says, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” So, you see, man starts out in life going from bad to worse. And if this were the end of the book, that would be awful. Thankfully, this brings us to the good news. The GOOD NEWS is that someone else has already died in YOUR place.God loves you so much that He was willing to come in the form of a man and die for you. The God-man was named Jesus which means “Jehovah is Salvation.” He was also called Immanuel which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:21-23). While Jesus lived in a fleshly body upon earth, He claimed that He was God. The miracles that Jesus performed attested to His deity. But most of all, the fact that He rose from the dead and appeared to over 500 witnesses all at one time proved that He is God our Savior. That is great news to us because we desperately need a Savior!  1 Corinthians 15:3-6a says, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once.”  Salvation is available to YOU through Jesus Christ.  Romans 10:9 says, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Romans 10:13 also adds, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Friend, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ like I did. There are no laws you can keep, no religion to follow, no creed to believe, and no good deeds you can do to get you to heaven. Not even “praying a prayer” can save you. You must acknowledge your helplessness without Christ, and put your faith in what Jesus already did on your behalf. Believe on Jesus Christ who is True, Faithful, Just, The Judge, the Creator, and most wonderfully, He is God the Savior! The Lord wants to save you, but you must believe and call upon His name. As best as you know how, pray to God and ask Him to save you.