If we are honest, all of us know we have messed up in some areas of life, and some of us have messed up a lot. When we consider being held accountable for our actions I think we all want, or hope, for mercy to win over judgment.  Just how or why could that be the case if we are brought before a judge about our actions? What about being brought before God over our lifetime of actions and words? Will we receive justice or mercy? How do we define what justice and mercy are?

If you gave your life to Christ your heart had to go through a transformational process where you changed from wanting to live for your self-interest to wanting to please God as your top priority. If your heart didn’t change salvation was never truly realized regardless how many times you prayed the sinner’s prayer. After all, God is more interested in transformation than he is in just forgiveness.   

Some people want to believe that a belief in God is not necessary in order to have good morals. They believe their morals are correct because they want to believe them regardless of whether these morals are based on something more solid than just their feeling. Thinking God is necessary to help us construct good morals is different than thinking that God exists. Remember, Satan believes God exists but he and the other fallen angles don’t live or exist with any morality other than to steal, kill and destroy. (John 10:10)

I have been a believer for over 50 years and I have heard a lot of teachings and sermons on receiving a “CALLING” from God.  I think most of those teaching have been about some type of ministry calling yet rarely are they on what Jesus meant when referring to the idea of calling. In my estimation, Jesus rarely talked about ministry calling and almost exclusively talked about the calling that God presents to mankind for relationship.

Have you ever wondered how you would change your past if you had the ability to go back in time? I think most of us would make different choices if we are honest about the past.  It might be about taking one kind of job over another or moving to a new city or even the friends we chose. Regardless of the individual details, our choices about the future have significant effects our life, both in terms of our fulfillment and our fruitfulness.

Everyone wants good friendships, that is unless they have been burnt or hurt by a past relationship. When relationships go bad or “South” as I like to refer to them, we can decide to give up on building new ones, put a shield around our hearts and just give up on building lasting friendships. We would rather have friendships at arms length because of the fear of being hurt again.

So many professing Christians know that real life is found in an intimate relationship with Father God and yet all too often we exchange our loving relationship with Him for rules and memorizing verses or portions of scripture. We exchange our intimacy with God himself for God’s word, which is filled with God’s thoughts rather than God himself. The pharisees of old are a good example of this exchange. For Christians today, we do the same thing by becoming more loyal to a book than to the one who wrote the book. 

If a person reads the four gospels at face value, they will quickly see Jesus was not trying to get big crowds by using some fancy teaching or preaching method, but rather by making the truth simple and accessible for the common person. He did share stories to illustrate biblical truth, but often he would explain God’s blessings were tied to a person’s obedience. If a person did decide to follow him he would explain that being a follower was more than just coming to hear a weekend message. Following Jesus meant that he expected his disciple would be 100% committed to him and not just acting like it was a part time job.  To follow Jesus meant you were becoming a “Radical Person”.

Many Christians who believe in the forgiveness of Christ often struggle with guilt and shame, even after coming to a saving experience in Christ. Shame is that awful thing that hinders our trust in the Lord and becomes a roadblock to intimacy with God. In a previous article, I dealt with guilt, but in this article I want to deal with the fruit of guilt, which is shame. Shame is the emotional feeling that can stop our development emotionally, physiologically and practically as we seek to develop our God given abilities. If a person has unresolved guilt, or what I call “Shadow” guilt, shame chains us to our yesterday.