Ain’t no joke

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”

It is April Fool’s Day; the day of you can tell any lie, or claim any thing as long as it is followed up with the disclaimer, “April Fools.” It is mostly all good harmless fun, and a break from the monotony and stress of life. All jokes aside, are you secure in your eternal destiny? Do you understand that religion will not get you there? We have been studying at church the book of Philippians, and part of my preparation led me to study religious growth recently. An alarming trend is that 1 in 5 claim “no religion,” but of that group, 68% claim to still believe in God. That statistic baffles me on many fronts. Claim Christianity, yet no proof of their faith evident in their lives? Claim faith in God, yet indecisive on what form of God, or what blend of religion? Do they just believe their religion will get them into heaven, or any form of paradise when they die?

Religion, and any form of it that places you in the center of it, will be the key to eternal punishment, and not paradise. If at your core you believe that by ANY work on your own, that you earn ANY merit with any form of any God, you WILL pay eternally for your mistake. They key to heaven is only through the understanding of Grace, and that is through the provision of God and his son, Jesus Christ. John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you think that your church attendance record gets you to heaven; if you think that being more of a “good” person than bad, or even just not as bad as the other guy, you are sadly wrong. Going through ritualistic acts that make you appear religious, only makes you appear religious to men; that is called religiosity and opens the doors to the pit below.

Once you realize that God pursued you, such as the passage in John above; you will be humbled to the point of living your life for the One who gave you life. Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. You didn’t find God, he found you, and wants you to live your short time here serving him, so that he can reward you eternally in heaven. It is liberating to understand Grace, to understand the trap found in religiosity, to see and feel what God gives you in a relationship with him. We all will kneel before him on judgement day; we will either kneel forgiven in our understanding of grace, or condemned by any other means. That ain’t no April Fool’s joke.