![]() Having prayed the sort of prayer above, you will want to start putting it into practice-that is, actually living with Jesus as your ruler. The second step follows naturally on from the first. Please forgive me and change me, so that I may live with Jesus as my ruler. Thank you that he rose from the dead to give me new life. Thank you for sending your Son to die for me so that I may be forgiven. I am guilty of rebelling against you and ignoring you. I don’t deserve your gift of eternal life. I know that I am not worthy to be accepted by you. Ask God to help you change from being a rebel to being someone who lives with Jesus as their ruler. Admit to him that you have rebelled against him and deserve punishment, and ask him for forgiveness on the basis of Jesus’ death in your place. ![]() The first thing to do is simply to talk to God. We can experience the joy of a new relationship with God.Īnd when Jesus does return in all his glory, we can be totally confident that we will be acceptable to him-not because we deserve to be, but because he took our punishment by dying in our place. In this new life that Jesus offers, God himself comes to live within us by his Spirit. We can now make a fresh start with God, no longer as rebels but as loyal friends, giving all thanks and honor to him. Because of his death in our place, he now offers to forgive all our sins. When Jesus returns and the judgment day comes, Jesus will be the one calling us to account for our rebellion against God.īut Jesus is not only God’s appointed king and judge he is also the savior from judgment. Jesus defeated death, and rose up to be what humanity was always meant to be: the ruler of God’s world.Īs God’s ruler, Jesus has also been appointed as God’s judge of the world. God accepted Jesus’ death as payment in full for our sins, and raised him from the dead. It’s a prospect we all face, because we’re all guilty of rebelling against God. This is a terrible thing, to fall under the sentence of God’s judgment. And since God is the source of life and all good things, being cut off from him means a destruction that never ends. He will cut us off from himself permanently. The sentence God will pass on that day will be to give us what we have asked for-which is separation from him. We will all one day stand before God and give account to him for our lives, for the damage we have done, and for our personal rejection of him as our ruler. The corruption, decay and death in our world are part of God’s punishment for humanity’s rejection of him.īut there is a further judgment that we will face. We experience God’s judgment against our rebellion in the reality of death. In other words, God won’t let the rebellion go on forever. He holds us accountable for our actions because it matters to him that we dishonor him, that we treat other people so poorly, and that we ruin his world. Like any good ruler, God cares enough to take our rebellion seriously. Our self-rule fails and we suffer the consequences, including the damage we do to ourselves, to the people around us, and to the world we live in. We find ourselves in a world full of little “gods,” each of us doing things our own way, each of us selfishly trying to bend the world and other people to our own will. The common Bible word for this rebellious stance towards God is “sin,” and we all do it-whether we follow a particular religion or not. We follow our own desires and priorities, and live by the values we decide are best (whether religious, secular, or a mix of both). ![]() We don’t honor and obey him as our ruler. We don’t thank him as we should for being our generous creator and provider. ![]() Most of the time, we simply ignore God or keep him at a distance, and get on with living our own lives. We rejected him as God by deciding to live our own way, in defiance of him. From the very beginning, we didn’t want God to be our ruler. Everything that is wrong in our lives and in the world stems from the fateful choice humanity has made. ![]()
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