Heaven without first forgiveness is not a possibility.
And no one has shown us forgiveness as has Jesus of Nazareth who called Himself the Son of God. “If you have seen me,” said Jesus, “you have seen the Father.”
Knowing that we have sinned is easy enough, so is asking Him for that forgiveness. First trusting Him, is easier that continually trusting Him.
Only as our lives develop we hear Him saying, “Return unto me.” The same issue rises: “But I cannot live it,” we say. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” we might think.
I would rather be an honest hypocrite than a person left struggling in his own cesspool of sin. “How can there be such as an honest hypocrite?” He would be a confessing one.
And the Bible says, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We can confess our sin. He will cleanse us, is He not the Savior? Trust Him.
To repent, “heaven rejoices when one man repents,” is to change our mind. Can we change our mind from claiming the inevitability of continuously sinning, to trusting our Savior to actually save us from our sin? That would take a miracle, wouldn’t it?
In our flawed understanding, the human race continuously invents religious ways which, if we do them well enough, we will be “good” people. We won’t even need a Savior. Christ will be of no use to us – a waste of God’s time. This is: “Our own understanding” of which the Lord says, “Trust it not.” And this is the main issue of powerless lives in the church. It is why we need the revival about which nearly everyone in the church world knows the need.
To this need the Lord said, “Return to your first love:” Jesus, the Savior. “Lean not on your (own) understanding.” Trust trumps answers we invent as to why: Why this? – trust Him. What must I do? “Trust Him: He is leading you.
We will find a word – we will hear a small voice – peace will lead us: trust in the Lord. The Savior saves. He is our Healer and He heals. He is our deliverer and He delivers.
All that was done in Old Testament heroic lives of faith are our examples. We are to nearly blindly trust and that is because we cannot understand the details of our adventure.
And we will know, when important, which steps to take. They will be steps of following, steps led by the lamp of God – His word; they will not be steps of self-direction and of rebellion: He will lead us home. We’re not there yet.
In the more difficult struggles, consider the cross upon which He died and what came from this.
Courage is faith. Trust is faith. Affirmation of the promises of God is faith. And without faith we cannot please God our Savior who is saving us all the way along.
The ultimate choice is to trust; the ultimate fact is that we are not (on) our own in this life-journey.
“Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great thou art; how great thou art.”
Buddy