This is how I see my life. I guess one would call this “my testimony”. I am sharing about my life here – from a theological viewpoint, considering “God’s relation to the world”.
Theology is: the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God’s relation to the world (Babylon; © 2005 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)
I was designed by God before birth.
My life began in 1952, but I was designed distinctly as “Keith” way before, waaay back before the creation of the world. I did not come from some slime pit, evolving to eventually be birthed by Mom. (Godless evolution is a stupididiotic concoction.)
I am a design in progress! I was designed and formed to become who I am becoming. (God is not finished with me yet!) Read: Ephesians 1:4
…He chose us
in Him
before the foundation of the world,
that we would be holy and blameless
before Him.
It´s like we all have a tag on the back of our neck. Just like any pair of jeans – the designer stitches-in his name. I have a tag on me, and it says:
Body by God
Designed by God
Created in the mind of God
Inspected personally by Holy Spirit
Size: ET – Eternal
Materials: 100% Forgiven, top-notch ready wear,
never fades, everlasting,
dies once then goes to heaven.
Does not go in Hell.
Do not fold. Keep from sinning.
Outer Shell: All weather loving.
Inner Soul: forged tough by God.
Sealed by His Holy Spirit: Genuine Eternal
Made to last.
Registered Heavenly Trademark:
Chosen In Him
No Returns – Guaranteed for eternal life
Any understanding of who I am (and who you are?) has to begin with the beginning. “In the beginning God….”
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. – Genesis 1:1-3 (NASB)
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
[ Descendants of Adam ] This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.
“Indeed, ask now concerning the former days which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and inquire from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it?
“It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands And I ordained all their host.
God had me in His mind before my birth!
It really really matters a lot to know that God created me, had me in His mind before my birth, cared about me, specifically me, even before I responded to His call. That truth has affected me all during my life. Creator God formed me! He knew me! He knows me. Wow. I am not a piece of…. I am not a pile of…. I am a man God wanted. He made me. Creator God choose to make me.
¨I created. I ordained all.¨ Wow! So awesome.
And there is more! Way before the creation of the earth, way before the creation of the first man and woman, God saw that I would fail Him terribly. He foresaw that I would not even come close to His standard of being holy.
He knew that I would be totally unfit for His Kingdom, totally unable to enter into His holy Heavens. He knew that, by my own strength, I am totally unable to follow Him. He knew that I would be sinful and therefore damned, forever banished from His Holiness.
God made a way to be legally restored.
So, in His plans, He also made a way for me to be legally restored, legally justified within His holy justice system. Knowing all this before He created the first molecule of the universe – Creator God planned to make it possible for me to enter into His gates as a pardoned sinner.
I will some day walk through God´s gate and enter His mansion! Hallelujah! [in Hebrew, hallĕlūyāh, meaning “praise (ye) the Lord” – (Babylon; © 2005 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated)]
God send His only Son to earth as a mere man in order to have Jesus die as the perfect substitute, taking upon Himself the sentence of death – thereby providing a legal pardon for me in heaven. A pardon for me!
Under God’s legal system, God forgave me of my sins because of the perfect substitute death of Jesus on the cross. He forgave me! I am set free through Jesus. Hallelujah! Wow!
That is why everything in my life revolves around my faith in Christ. There is NOTHING more important. He has saved me from hell, from damnation, from the righteous wrath of God.
I will spend an eternity as a citizen of heaven because I have been redeemed. I have been forgiven by Creator God. I am “in Christ”.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. – Romans 8:1
I am no longer condemned by His justice system. Jesus calls me his friend. I can pray personally to God. He hears me. He has promised to answer me.
Because He accepts me now as His son, I speak to Creator God as my “Abba Father”. The term in Scripture means that since I am made a child of God through His legal act of salvation, I now have an endeared relationship to Him, which in our terms of endearment makes God my dear “….dad, daddy, pa, papa, poppa, pop, and pops.”] Abba. Daddy.
That´s how close He has made me to Him. Not I! He has done this.
I came to understand this more deeply through my experience of being daddy to my daughter and to my son. There is nothing like being a daddy to a baby! That taught me how much God loved me.
When I held my little girl and boy in my arms, when I watched my little toddlers, Jessica and Matthew, run around our living room, round and round they went… I knew there was nothing they could do to make me love them more. My love was total.
They did not earn my love. They did not have to “do” anything to win my affection. My love was already total. All they had to do was be themselves. Running around, giggling and laughing in play — that’s all. Just being.
I experienced there just how much God loves me and cares for me. I know He loves me just as I am. Contrary to popular belief, God is not an ogre ruling over me with thunderbolts and fear.
Creator God is my Father, one who loves me like I do my kids. (He does a better job of loving than I have.) And He loves me when I sin. He loves me no less when I sin.
Since becoming His child through faith in Christ, just being who I am – is enough for God. He died on a cross to make it possible for me to become His child.
I acknowledged Christ as Savior God, turned away from my own way, and followed Him in sincerity and truth. And He saved me that day. I confess that since that day I have failed in many many ways. But I know that, as I confess and repent, my relationship with God is renewed.
1 John 5:13 [ This Is Written That You May Know ]
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
I do not lose my salvation when I sin. His salvation is not based on my being good. His salvation is based on His powerful legal system, and that system in heaven declares me free from condemnation forever. (Romans 8:1) Hallelujah!
I am of great value.
How much is it worth to be valued by Creator God Himself!? He came to earth to die in my place. How great is that!?
For More: Who You Are In Christ
Excerpt: “Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant.
You have value in the eyes of God so great that it was worth dying for.
You are a blessing to the world.”
So when I disappoint God by sinning, whatever it may be, I turn to Him in repentance, as quickly as I can, and He restores me. When I get discouraged, I turn to Him, and I know that He cares about what I am dealing with. And I am encouraged in Him.
I am totally encouraged by the attitude of God towards a sinner such as I. He does not condemn me. He does not shame me. He is patient. He always draws me to Himself and is always renewing the strength I need for each day.
“You were tired out by the length of your road, Yet you did not say, ‘It is hopeless.’ You found renewed strength, Therefore you did not faint.
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
There came a time in my life where I chose to accept Jesus as my Savior. I responded to God’s calling and conviction. And that made all the difference in the world. In that moment in time, Creator God “re-created me” and I became brand new inside (2 Corinthians 5:17). I was “born again” – and in that moment began an eternal life with God. In that moment in time I was changed forever. I am not the same as before.
Sin and sinning.
If you know me, you know I am still “a work-in-progress”. I disappoint myself and others. But the Holy Spirit is in me, and He is transforming me more and more each day. I will be here in this temporary body until He calls me Home, at which time He will give me a perfect, brand new, heavenly body – in which I will live for eternity with Him. Can’t get better than that!
When I sin, I do not stop in my sin. I keep on going. I do not wallow in it. I repent and ¨get on with it¨. I refresh my soul. I do not allow the Enemy to get a grip. Romans 6 explains my ¨take¨ on sin. Read the chapter. It explains the reality of what is our relation to sin – now that we are born-again.
I have a choice. You have a choice, if you are truly born-again in Jesus. I can choose to sin, or I can choose to repent and ¨repower¨ in the Holy Spirit. Romans 6:12-13 tells me that I can ¨let¨or not ¨let¨ sin reign. I have the power!
12 Therefore
do not let sin reign
in your mortal body
so that you obey its lusts,
13 and
do not go on
presenting
the members of your body
to sin
as instruments of unrighteousness
Because I have been born-again, transformed into a new creation, I am not a mere human, but rather — a brand new type of creation of God. As of that moment in time when I personally accepted Christ as my Savior (repented and acknowledged Jesus as Lord), I no longer have to sin — but now have the ability to deny sin and live in obedience to God.
Romans 6:2-4:
How shall we who died to sin
still live in it?
3 Or do you not know
that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
have been baptized into His death?
4 Therefore we have been buried with Him
through baptism into death,
so that as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father,
so we too might walk in newness of life.
I hope you also have been born again, re-created by God. You can be if you respond to God. It’s not too late… till it’s too late.
…we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:20c-21
FOR MORE:
