Who am I?

How dare I. How dare I. How dare I call myself a son of God?

How dare I do anything with my life but lie flat on my face and beg for mercy from God. I have rebelled and sinned against Him and for that I deserve to be wiped out, to be destroyed, banished to an eternal hell, burning in a lake of fire, crying out in pain without anyone to hear. That is what I deserve. I am filthy. I am dirty. I am useless. Who am I to think that God even remotely needs me for Himself, for anything?
Only by God’s mercy am I alive now, only by His mercy am I sitting in this chair now without being obliterated. He created me an eternal being. I chose to follow Satan and my own selfish desires. For that I deserve death and pain and hardship and all that goes along with assuming I am better than Him and don’t need Him, that I am more important than God. Who am I to think that I am a righteous man? I am evil and sinful, rebellious and arrogant, proud and disgusting. I should be forever banished from His presence and obliterated by His anger and wrath and judgement. That is what I deserve. Who the hell do I think I am? Who am I to be proud of being good? Who am I to say that I love God? I don’t have any idea what love is. I am full of lust and selfishness, judgement and sinfulness. If a rich man throws some coins to a beggar, does the beggar love Him, or does he grovel at the rich man’s feet only to save his own life?

I am selfish yet I profess to love God. I wish I loved God. But I don’t love God. I don’t love Him because I don’t have the ability to do so in my own strength, in myself. I only profess to love You because I know that You can save me. I know that I am dead without You and dead without Your mercy. Only by Your mercy am I still alive and not burning in hell.

No longer can I fool myself into believing that I really love God. I don’t. I love myself more than God. I am the prodigal son – only to return to my Father’s house because I am hungry and living in a pigsty. I am beginning to realise I am nothing.

God made me beautiful, perfect, in His image according to His will and purpose. He made me. He made me. I belong to Him. And then I rebelled. I pushed away the Creator of the whole universe. How dare I.
I pushed away the Creator of the universe, something for which He should have crushed me under His fist, with one blow. I am bad. I am rebellious. I wronged the King of the Universe. I have broken the law of the entire universe, the number one law to obey the King of the Universe. How dare I even stand before Him? I stand there, arrogant, still justifying myself, still deceiving myself into believing that I am good, that I love, and that I am righteous. I should be on the floor begging for Him to spare my life.

I am the prodigal son. I was born into The Royal Line, born into the Family of the King of all the Heavens and all the Earth. As soon as I could I told the King that I was leaving and He must leave me alone because I am better off on my own and I am good enough without Him. I was arrogant and proud and believed in myself. I took His money and squandered it. Then I got so desperate and hungry and wanted to save my own life. So I go back to the King and I beg Him for a place on His staff. Not even that do I deserve. I don’t even deserve to set foot on His property. I deserve to be banished and told never to come back. I deserve to go and rot with the pigs and die a miserable, undignified death in that filth and dirt.
But He invites me in and calls me His son again. It makes no sense to me.

Now don’t for one second act like or think that you have come to the King begging for mercy because You love Him. You don’t love Him. I don’t love God. I love my life. I love myself. I care only about myself and I will do whatever I have to do to save myself. Even my correct actions, coming back to my Father’s house, are to save myself. My actions are selfish. It’s all about me. I hate that about myself. I hate that. But it is who I am. It’s all about me. My life is all about using whatever I can to save my life. That is the truth. But God, I want to love you. I don’t know how and I can't do it. But You can teach me to love You. I will only be able to love You if You place Your love in me for You.

I came back to God’s house because I was hungry and needed food, but then I told my Father that I came home because I love Him.
So not only am I a rebel, a deserter, a hater, a thief, a runaway, a fool for wanting and wasting my inheritance and wanting that more than my Father’s love, a beggar coming looking for food, a selfish bastard for caring only about myself, but I am a liar too, for even after doing all these utterly disrespectful things to the King of all Heaven and all of Earth and all the Universe and all of Everything, I have the audacity and unrepentant attitude to lie to His face and tell Him that I came home because I love Him. What a liar.
And still He takes me back. He takes me back knowing that I am lying flat out to His face. I don’t understand how or why He takes me back. I don’t understand how or why He does it.

I can't understand it. I wonder how I would have reacted. I think I would have shot my son. I would have punished him so severely and made him pay back everything he took and make him pay penance for his disrespect and rebellion. I would have made him pay, big time. That again shows my sinfulness – how I would react so much differently to Him.

This is God we’re talking about here. God. God who holds a million galaxies in the palm of His hand. God who holds the universe in order. He keeps the universe in order. He built the universe by speaking it. He can destroy it just by thinking it. Or just destroy it. He can do what He wants.
He is a great big elephant bull and I am a pathetic little ant. He doesn’t need me. I am nothing compared to Him. I don’t deserve to be in His presence. I don’t deserve to know Him. I don’t even deserve to think about Him. I don’t deserve to come to Him, to call on Him and I certainly don’t deserve to claim that I know Him or claim that He is my dad.

I don’t deserve to know Him. I don’t deserve to talk to Him. I don’t deserve to expose Him to my putrid and revolting stench and filth. I don’t deserve to have Him save me and I don’t deserve to call on His name. What I deserve is death and pain and punishment and justice for my rebellion and evil nature.

I don’t deserve to even think about Him. I deserve nothing from Him. I deserve death. I deserve what I asked for – being overwhelmed, fire, pain, being unfulfilled, fear, despair and death; eternal separation from God, from love, from good, from the Creator of all things, from my Father. This is what I deserve.

Nothing in me deserves anything more than the worst, most horrible scenario and violent excruciating punishment. That is what I deserve.

How dare I think that I can sing songs to God and about God? I should stop kidding myself. I can't save the world. I can't save myself. All I can do is beg for mercy and hope that the King spares me.
I should stop kidding myself that God needs me, that I have any power over His heart, that I am worthy in any way.
I can't save the world, I can't save myself. I need saving and the only thing that can save me is if the King decides to save me. I need His mercy.
I have nothing.
I am nothing.
I am filth.
I deserve the worst.

He is God. He can do what He wants. He can destroy everything just by thinking it. He can bring pain and suffering on me. He can strike me dead with one blow. He strikes my country or the whole world dead with one blow. And doing so would not fall outside of justice, because that is what we chose, what I chose.
He is God. I don’t even deserve to write His name on this page or to speak His name. I am not worthy of that. My very nature brings dishonour to His name.

I don’t even deserve to praise Him. He doesn’t need my praise. He is God either way. He is God no matter what. He can do what He wants to punish me for my rebellion and sin.
Do no forget His greatness.
Do not forget who you are dealing with here.
This is God. I don’t deserve to say His name. I should spend my life flat on the floor with my face buried in the dirt, begging for His mercy and apologising for my ways.
He can crush me with one blow. Just remember that. This is God. This is God.

But I have come back to Him out of necessity to save myself and He has invited me back with open arms. I should spend the rest of eternity grovelling at His feet for accepting me back home and feeding me, because to grovel at His feet would be better than spending the rest of eternity living in fire, pain, anxiety, fear and anguish.

Have mercy King, please have mercy. Please, I beg of you, have mercy.

Not only have I lied to Him, but I have lied to myself too. I tell myself that I deserve to be invited back, that I am entitled to it, because I have ‘turned from my sin’ and because ‘I have repented’.
I haven’t fully repented until I say the following:
“God, I came back to Your house because this is the last place that I thought of where I could get some food. It isn’t because I love you. I don’t love you. There is no love in me; none. There is lust to satisfy my own desires and to look after myself, but no love.”
That is the truth. That is my repentance.

I am a grain of sand in the desert and God is a mighty wind that blows.
I am an ant and He is a great elephant bull.
I am a speck of dust and He is the entire universe.
Who am I for Him to care about me? To be even remotely bothered with anything I have to say or do? I am a complete and utter non-entity, a nothing in His life of being God. How dare I think that He delights in me or loves me because of who I am?

He doesn’t save me because of who I am, or because I am so salvable, or because He needs me or because all He has ever wanted is to know me.
He saves me because He is God and He decides to save me. Period.
How dare I think that because He saves me, there must be something good or desirable about me? What possibly could the God and King of the whole universe find in me that is desirable?
The only thing desirable in me is what He has created, what He has formed in me.

I am a filthy beggar living on the side of the road and He has come and bathed me and dressed me in crisp new clothes, not because I do so deserve.
It is only because He decided it. He decided it. Why? I don’t know. Why does He love? I don’t know.
Why does He save me – the most evil and wretched of all the beasts on this tiny, dying planet? Why did He decide to take me back and spare my life, so that I can live in a comfortable house for eternity? Why? Why? Why?

I don’t know. It is not for me to know. All I can be thankful for is that He decided it. I am lucky. What is for me to do is to stop talking trash and lying to Him, others and myself, saying that I am good and that I love Him?
I am not good – I am the most sinful dirty and rebellious of all His creation.
I don’t love Him – I just do what will save my life, what is best for me.

My first sin was to run away and rebel. My second sin was to come back to His house and tell Him, myself and all other people that He invited me back because I have something special and because I love Him.
There is no good in me outside His goodness in me.
There is no love in me outside His love in me.
So then how can I take any credit for His love and goodness in me?

Saying all this is true repentance. I admit it God! I admit all these things – things You knew all along. You knew them and still You didn’t crush me with Your hand, like I deserve.
How can You not be so angry to wipe me and this sinful world away? I don’t understand you.
I admit it. I speak it. I profess my second great sin out loud.

No matter how much I admit it, how much I say sorry, or how much I thank you, it doesn’t change the fact that You had already done it long before I started trying to bring You my pathetic gifts and offerings.
I have nothing that You need or want. But God I say it because I need to be honest with myself and with others, and with you.
I admit all these things.
I am bad, You are good.
I am selfish, You are love.

God, for what it is worth, I am sorry. I beg You to have mercy on me and not to banish me from Your house. Have mercy please. Thank You that You have taken me in all my filth into Your mansion and dressed me in an Armani. Thank you. Have mercy.
I only came to You because I was hungry, and I lied to you, telling You I came because I love you.
What do You deserve?
You deserve a lot more than I could ever bring. You don’t deserve my praise, because my praises are tainted with impure intentions and motives. You deserve perfection and love. These things I cannot give to you, because they do not reside in me. I am not love. How can I credit myself with loving you, when the only love in me is from you?

So what can I do? Nothing. There is nothing that I can do. Absolutely nothing. I cannot save myself. I cannot justify myself. I cannot redeem myself. I cannot rid myself of the sinful spots all over my soul.

What can I do? Nothing. Once a prodigal son has turned from his Father and left, will he return? No. He will only return when he is so hungry and desperate that this is the last place where he can be fed.

So how do I make sense of all this? What am I to do with this life?

I should spend the rest of my life grovelling at His feet, with my face flat in the dirt, begging for His mercy, thanking Him for His mercy and living in the shadows, hiding myself from His face. I should do that.

Is that what He tells me to do?
I deserve to be banished to an eternal hell.
If not that, then I deserve to die.
If not that, then I deserve to spend my life grovelling at His feet, begging for mercy.
If not that, then I don’t know.

But He doesn’t make a slave of me, nor does He make me pay back my squandered inheritance. Sometimes I think He has been too kind to us.

He kills the fattened calf and prepares a feast for me. He calls me His son and embraces me. He is happy that I am back and an heir and child of His. I am embarrassed because I don’t deserve this. I am embarrassed that I don’t feel better, more thankful. I am embarrassed that I don’t love this person who loves me. I am disgraceful.
But He has taken me back into His house.

Does He need / want / expect me to do anything in return for Him giving me life?
Need – no.
Want / expect – I don’t know.

“God I just realise how helpless I am. I am helpless to provide You with anything that should warrant You taking me back into Your house.
Then I started thinking about how I can justify and make up for what I have done and for what You have done for me by taking me back. I must work hard and know You and love You and love others.
I think that if I do that I will at least earn a little bit of my keep. But not even that will do. Don’t try justifying being in Your house by doing things, because it isn’t enough.
That is like a murderer bringing a single jelly bean He scrounged off the floor to the person whose son He just murdered. It makes no difference to what you have done. It in no way justifies or makes any better what you have done. It is not enough. It will never be enough. I will never be able to earn my keep in my Father’s house. Why?
Because He doesn’t need anything from me. He doesn’t need my money, He doesn’t need my labour, He doesn’t need my love, and He needs nothing from me.
All these things are nothing to Him. Therefore I am totally helpless, one hundred percent at His mercy for salvation.

So then is it only for my own good that I obey Him and love Him?
It is for my own good. I was created to honour and love God, and to keep all His commandments. That is for my own good. God loved me and saved me because of nothing that I am. That follows on – nothing that I do in the future will justify Him saving me. I can never repay the debt that was paid for me. If I tried my best and lived the perfect life from this moment on, I would not even pay one percent of what I own my Father.

So He can't want that. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need my sacrifice. I need my sacrifice. I need humility. I need this to make my life better.
Us Christians, we are such liars, such hypocrites. We think we are better than others because we’ve given our lives to God and because ‘we love Him’.
We don’t love Him. And we haven’t given our lives for any other reason than to save ourselves. We realised we were hungry and we came to be fed. And now we work in the fields to justify our debt forgiven. But we are only kidding ourselves. The problem is we are lying to God and even though He knows we are lying, He still does not banish us. Even the lack of sincerity in our hearts does not turn Him away from us.
I tell you a man who tells his Father he works for Him because he loves Him although he does only for his own good is just as bad as the child who tells his dad he doesn’t love Him and chooses to be lazy. I am no better for being a ‘good Christian’, so stop thinking that you are.

We Christians are just like the rest of creation – prodigal sons. We are all prodigal sons. They just haven’t got to the point of starvation yet where they return to their Father’s house because they can get fed there.

The only reason I am a Christian is because I’m trying to feed myself and look after my own life and I have found where I can be looked after.

So:
We weren’t worthy to come back.
Neither can we ever repay the debt God paid for us.
So stop believing it and stop trying
So then what do I do?
Realise that I am alive only under His mercy and His grace.
Realise that He has the power to wipe me out whenever He wants and nothing, absolutely nothing, I have ever done or can ever do will save me from Him wiping me out if He chooses to do so. Nothing. Nothing is or ever will be good enough.
Jesus I tell You all this now, not because You didn’t know it, but because I didn’t know it. I want to stop lying to You because it is eating me up inside and I can't go on like this.

All I can do and should do is live my life as You intended. You intended for me to be in relationship with You and intended for me to be in relationship with others, You intended me to declare Your glory by the way I live my life, You intended for me to enjoy the earth and everything in it.

What will happen if I don’t honour you? From a salvation perspective, nothing. Nothing will happen because I haven’t been invited back home on the premise that I should honour you. But it will make my life better and the lives of others better, because they will see Your love and goodness in me.

So God I am sorry – not that saying sorry will make a difference because You saved me before I said sorry.
And God thank You – not that saying thank You will make a difference either, because You saved me before I said thank you.

And for those out there who haven’t come home, all they have to do is call on You and they will be saved, because as Paul says in Roman’s “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” You are amazing. I don’t understand you, Your love or Your forgiveness. But thank you.

You don’t need my honour or my praise or my love. But You ask for it. I don’t know why, but You ask for it.
I know that it is good for me, but I don’t know if or why it is good for you. Does it make You happy to have me come back to you?
Yes! Luke 15:12-32 shows that. It makes You happy. Not because I am so wonderful, but it is because You found something that You lost, something that is dear to you. It is because of Your great love.

So it is for us to have life in abundance that we should love and honour you. And it is for others to see life in abundance and be drawn to You so that You can celebrate having found another lost sheep.

This just seems all about me – my salvation, my life in abundance, my happiness. I feel selfish, I feel like even though I am trying to love and honour my Father, I’m doing it for my own good and for the good of others.
True love would be doing it for the good of God only.
Is it to His benefit to have me back? Really?
I feel like my faith is selfish, that it is all about me.

“God I want to love you. Please teach me and help me to love you.”

But I guess that is what love is about – it is not all self serving, yet neither is it all self-sacrificing. Love’s very nature is to benefit all those that partake in it. And so when I love God it will be good for Him and for me and others. And similarly when God loves me it is good for me and others, but also it is good for Him.

I guess the Bible says that God delights in us, that the righteous man finds favour in His eyes, that He rejoices when one sheep is found, when one more person comes home.

“God I feel like I should lay on my face my whole life and beg for mercy. I can't imagine deserving anything more than that. All I can imagine is that. I feel guilty that I should run free, talk to You and enjoy Your blessings, because of my sin.
I guess this is where trust comes in, because You say:
As far as the east is from the west, that’s how far You have removed our transgressions from us.
Nothing can separate us from Your love.

You paid the ultimate price for me. Now I feel like I should pay You back. But I can't, because I will never be able to pay it back. But You did say that I can release others of the debt they owe me. That I can do.

And I should love You with all my heart, mind and soul.
I should love my neighbour as I love myself.
I should seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness.

The heavens and earth declare Your glory
I was made to declare Your glory.
A fish swims, a bird soars, a cheetah runs, a human loves – loves You and loves themselves and loves others.
That is our declaration of Your glory.

How do I love You God?

Love is:
Patient
Kind
Rejoices in truth
Always protects
Always trusts
Always hopes
Always perseveres

Love is not:
Envious
Boasting
Proud
Jealous
Rude
Self seeking
Easily angered
Keeps records of wrongs
Delights in evil

I have realised that love is for me, others and God. I guess that is the thing about love – it serves everyone. When you try serving only yourself, you lust and you end up hurting God, yourself or others in your pursuit of your desires.

But love is about getting what you want while God gets what He wants and others get what they want. So I can never get away from the self serving element of love and that is fine. That is how God created love to function. So I must not assume that if I am getting something good out of a situation that I do not love. Rather the acid test is whether I am getting what I want while God gets what He wants and others do too.

I need to accept the self-serving element of love. The bible says that it is not self-seeking, but it is self-serving, as well as serving others. One cannot escape the fact that love is nice for the person who acts in love as well as the one who receives. And this must be part of the reason why we love – we would not love if it was bad for us.
Yes maybe it is uncomfortable and tough at times, but we carry on loving because we know it is good for us and others.

Loving others is about making them feel better but also about making ourselves feel better through the love we experience ourselves when we love others.
Loving others makes them feel good.
And God enjoys it when we love Him and He enjoys the benefit we experience when we love Him, others and ourselves.

So to answer my earlier question: “Should we love God for Him, us, or others?”
The correct answer is all of the above.

So why does God ask us to love Him if He doesn’t need it?
Well, why did He ask for lambs to be slaughtered as sacrifices? It was not because He needed it.
It was to keep us on track and it honours Him before other people.
God created us to be in a love relationship with Him and with others and He enjoys that, delights in the multiplication of His love.

I can go along fine without love in life, but I would rather not because it is just so cool when you’re being loved and loving back. It is the most awesome feeling ever.

I get irritated with this mindset that God needs us Christians to lift His name on high. He doesn’t. He is God and it doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t make Him any more or any less God. He doesn’t need us to sing songs or evangelise or any of that ministry stuff. He could click His fingers and have the whole world bowing at His feet and worshipping Him. He could change every person’s heart just by thinking it. He doesn’t need us. So we should not for one second think that we are central to God’s plan. God is central to God’s plan. Jesus is central to God’s plan. The world doesn’t need a saviour; the world already has a saviour. The world has already been saved.
Similarly, I can't stand these references to God’s army. Who is God’s army? And who are they going to fight? Satan? Why fight someone who has already been defeated? Evil? Wasn’t evil also defeated? Jesus just came here to earth and was like, “OK, you’re dead. You lose. And Satan lost.”
The battle has been won. It is finished.

Just because the loser gets to run around the stadium for a couple of hours after the battle doesn’t mean he hasn’t lost. He lost and Jesus won. And there wasn’t even a battle. Jesus just said, “I win” and He won. He roared, the Mighty Lion of Judah roared and the universe trembled and submitted to Him.

So if the world is saved and God doesn’t need our love, then what are we doing here?
I believe we are learning how to love. We are dirty, lustful, rebellious and self-seeking beings and we need to learn to love before we spend eternity with God.
Also God likes it when we love Him so it is good for Him too.
And, it points others to Him by the love that we show for one another.
So we are here to learn to love and grow in love. Love for God, and others and ourselves.

It’s like what Matt Brewer said to His colleague who couldn’t understand why he was so loving to her. He said, “Well God loves people, so I love people.”

There is no love outside of God.

I honestly feel like I love myself more than I love God. But I don’t think that is extraordinary because we need to learn to love and when we first come to Him we don’t know how to love and that is where the journey starts. I think maybe I am a little harsh on myself, but I guess it is only in being brutally honest about our shortcomings are we able to bring them into the light and deal with them. I know that is not the way it should be, but at the moment it is.

However, I do want it to be the way it should be.

“So Daddy, Jesus my Redeemer, Almighty Yahweh of all the heavens and the earth whose name I am not worthy to speak but for Jesus atonement, my prayer to You is that You would work in me and transform me into a man who:
Loves You with all my heart, mind, body and soul and loves my neighbour as I love myself.
Further, reveal Yourself to me. Reveal to me Your love. Reveal to me Your greatness. Reveal to me Your glory, Your grace, Your power and Your mercy. I want to understand.”

I go back to the story of the prodigal son:
I ran away to satisfy my own needs by lust
I came back to God because I could not do it on my own and I was hungry
I lied to His face that I had returned because I love Him
He accepted me back nonetheless and called me His son, threw me a party, even though I deserved none of this
I have come clean about my selfishness and impure motives for returning to His home
I now want to get off the treadmill of making sure I stay within in the boundaries of salvation

I know that the purpose of my life is to learn to love and to glorify God by living a life of worship and obeying Him.
The point of all this is not that He needs it, but rather that I need it, others need it and He enjoys the love.

So my next question is: “Do I need to continue doing or being something in order to retain my salvation?”

My dad told me that nothing can separate me from His love. As long as I want it. I do want it.

The almighty God has called me His son and said there is nothing I can do, expressly or accidentally that will make Him cast me out. He will never, never, ever cast me out. According to Him I will always be His child. He will never turn His back on me. Never.
Anytime I need Him or want Him, He will help me, save me, be there for me. He will always be there. As He says, “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Because I guess that if you are prepared to call on Him, you must believe in Him. You would not call on someone you didn’t believe in.

So how do I believe in Jesus? How do I become saved?
First, believe in God and that Jesus died to save me
Second, profess it verbally.

I have done that. So I am saved. I believe the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I believe a lion can kill me. I believe exercise keeps me healthy.
And I believe Jesus is the son of God, that He loves me, that He died and rose again and because of Jesus’ sacrifice the Father has opened His arms to accept me back and said I don’t have to pay back anything for what I have done. I believe I can come home and not be judged.
He said, “You can never pay back what you owe me, but because I love you so much, I will pay it for you. By My love you are free to come home. By My love only.”

So I have come home. Now what? Can I do what I want? Yes. Because nothing is too great to separate me from the love of my dad. No matter how lazy, disobedient, proud or negligent I am, nothing can separate me from my dad’s love. Nothing will get me banished from His house and nothing will make Him turn His back on me. Nothing.

Only one thing: If I expressly choose to leave my dad’s house. This has been a fear. What if God leads me to wrong Him or turn on Him and harden my heart, like He did with pharaoh? What if He has pre-destined me to be that person?

Well, what I have realised is that, firstly, if I am that person, pre-destined to harden my heart against the Lord and be banished to eternal hell for it, then there is nothing I can do about it.
Further than begging God to not let me be that person, there is nothing that I can do. So there is no use worrying about it. I can't change it if God has pre-destined that, in the same way as I couldn’t change the fact that He saved me before I asked. I cannot change God’s mind about me. What I can do is choose Him though. I cannot allow my concern over whether He chooses me to determine whether I choose Him.
I cannot change how God feels about me. If He has pre-destined me to harden my heart against Him and renounce Him, then I am powerless to that. I cannot change it so I must just accept it. Remember I am at His mercy anyway. All I can do is beg for mercy and ask that I not be that person.

The second thing is that if I look at my life and my heart, it does not strike me that I would be the man to harden my heart. I may sin and I may expressly disobey Him, but to my heart overall does not strike me as one which is hardened.
My desire is to know God, to please God, to love God and for Him to love me and heal me. That does not sound like the desire of the man who has hardened His heart. I know that sometimes things happen in the future that cause people to renounce their faith and turn away from Him. And that could happen to me. But I must remember that nothing that happens will ever separate me from His love and nothing that I ever do will cause Him to turn His back to me.

“God, my prayer is that I am sure there are areas of my heart that are hardened to you. But I am trying and I ask that You would have mercy on me for these hardenings and sins of which I am not aware. Forgive me for that. But I do feel that I try as best I can to be soft of heart with You. Please continue to work in my heart so that it would be humble and worshipping and believing before You. And please don’t ever let me go, no matter what happens in the future and how bad things get, don’t let me renounce you. Fight for me. Fight so hard for me that I don’t turn on you. Don’t let me turn from you. Holy Spirit I need You to help me not turn from You. Please help me.”

I am scared that I will denounce God sometime in the future or turn from Him. But I should remember that peter denied Jesus 3 times but He ended up leading the church. I guess that just shows that God allows us to mess up and denounce Him and still He gives us chances, as long as we come back.
So if it happened to Peter, it can surely happen to me. I may deny Jesus, get lazy in faith or disobey Him. But that does not make me lose my salvation or get me ‘kicked out the house’. The only thing that will get me kicked out the house is if I choose not to believe any longer and declare it out loud – if I say that Jesus is no longer my saviour and if I say that God is not God and I don’t want to live in His house.

Now the fact of the matter is that this is a real possibility. Not a probability, but a possibility. I guess that what one needs to do is:
Pray that Jesus will never let me go and fight fiercely for me.
Remember that He goes and finds the lost sheep
Think how absurd it sounds for me to denounce my faith. I would have to throw away half the books I own, both my Bibles, 10 years of journals, my Christian music; I would have to stop being friends with all my Christian friends, who are my closest, stop going to church, cell group, counselling and other ministry, stop tithing, break up with my Christian girlfriend, stop believing God made us, never ever pray, no matter how dire the circumstances, stop thanking God for the earth and creation, stop believing Jesus died and rose again for us, never think about God, never look at life from God’s perspective, stop journaling and writing.
I cannot imagine life without Jesus, God and faith.
Decrease the likelihood of denouncing Him – hold on tight to the Lion of Judah, pray, read my bible, maintain my Christian friendships, not allow any sin to get a grip on my life, hang out with God, ask Him to heal me, grow in love, minister, fellowship, be accountable.
If I do these things it will build up support around me – internally and externally.
Think about my wife. I would never turn my back on my family or my wife. Also if I was happily married for 20 years and suddenly lost my wife, it would be tough because ‘I knew her’ and so if I know God it will be far less likely that I give Him up.

So there is a possibility this might occur but I need to have faith that all the above will get me through the rough and doubting times. And I need to keep working at it, so that I won't turn on Him. I may disobey, make a mistake, deny Him, expressly sin, but never turn away and not come back. The others are all forgiven. Even if I am not sorry and my heart isn’t right I can ask Him to change my heart. Don’t feel guilty about a sinful heart, just ask Him to change it and He will.

One last thing on this matter is that I look at 1 person out of 1000000 who renounce their faith and I extrapolate that to myself. I need to get some perspective – what about the 999999 who remain in the faith?
When heartache and pain come, remember to go to God. Sometimes the pain drowns out the truth and that is when people turn away. So go to Him with your pain and share it with Him and your Christian friends.

And remember that those that renounce their faith could well have only had a relationship with the church only, the organisation, and not with Jesus because a real relationship with God should not be that easy to give up, because you have experienced the companionship as I have.

A Father will fight for His child.

This is the next thing that I need to remember – that a Father will fight for His child. Just like dad said that if I became a drug addict, he would come and find me and drag me out of there and fight for me. He would fight for me and do what is best for me, as hard as it may be.
And Jesus says that He is the shepherd who goes and searches for the lost sheep – He is always coming after us.
I pray that God would fight me for me, because I am sure that it is ourselves that are the major obstacle to coming back to Him.
Furthermore it is the truth – and if you know the truth it is a lot harder to start believing lies. That is why I am asking God to tell me the truth.

Life is not a tightrope. Jesus knew before that we would make mistakes and defy Him and fight Him; and He knows our impure motives, our lies and our deceit. But I guess that is why Jesus came in the first place – because God knew that we could never be good enough to save ourselves.

Think of the scenario of you being stuck in a drug house in Hill brow, about to be killed. You call out to your dad, “Dad, please help me!”
He comes immediately, pays the money you owe and takes you home. Then what?
Well you can go back to that place. You can keep going back and He will keep coming to get you out. He will keep coming and will never leave you there to die.
But neither will He keep quiet. He will begin to speak into your life and tell you what you are doing wrong – the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He will not keep quiet and He will not leave you there. He will even come when you are not even calling. He will not help you to feed your addiction, because God is not a co-conspirator in sin, but He will go and work in all areas of your life to try getting you back – especially if you have called on Him to save you.

Will He leave you alone? Yes. If you tell Him to. If you say, “God, get out of my life. I don’t want You to come here anymore and I want You to leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
I don’t think He will give up without a fight, but He will honour your choice and not interfere where He is not wanted.

So then you go back to your ways and get into trouble again. If you call out to Him again, will He come and save you? Yes, He will! Why? Because nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing!

The problem is not that we never call out, it is that:
We are too proud to call out.
We don’t understand the extent of His love.
We are too stubborn.

All we have to do is call out to the lord and we will be saved. God is not going to say, “You called on me only to save yourself and you have an impure heart so you don’t qualify.” Or “you pushed me away once too many and now I am going to leave you there.” Just as Jesus says we must forgive our neighbour 7 times 77, do you not think that is at least the standard with which He forgives us? As I write this I am blown away by His forgiveness.

When you read of this kind of love, it makes you want to say but no you have to do this and you have to do that. Why? Because it is taking advantage if we just go on sinning, we are taking advantage of God’s love. And it is not right. But then I look at my life and I am sure that we can all look at our own lives and say, “but hey I am also taking advantage of God and His love – I have not lived a perfect life since being saved and neither has anyone else!” but that is the whole reason Jesus came – because we do take advantage! But His love is bigger than our sin, and it is bigger than our ongoing sin, our defiance, our disobedience! It is bigger.

Now I am not saying we should continue sinning, but I am saying that if we do, we are covered by His love! He doesn’t kick us out of His house! But you can bet that if we live in His house and we sin, He will discipline us to make us more like God’s kids should be; help us become better people.

God says, “All who come to Him, for whatever reason, will be saved.”

So what does God ask of us in order to reside in His house?
Well first you have to believe in Him and His house.
Then we have to want to live in His house, or at least come home.
Then we just have to not renounce Him or say ‘I don’t want this or You anymore” or leave of your own accord.

And then?
And then you do nothing
All you can do is be prepared for the Holy Spirit which now lives inside you, to speak to you and change your life.
Be prepared for Him to speak to you words that will change your life if you take them to heart.
You see, your lifestyle post salvation does not determine whether you are saved or not. You have called on Him and He has answered. You are saved.
You may not want to change, but God does want you to change, and does want you to be healed. So as long as you are living under His roof He will not be quiet.

Understanding all this sets me free – it makes me focus on trust. Trust that I don’t have to remember every single rule and keep driving myself to secure my salvation. It is about trusting that through seeking Him, He will change you.

Now it says often that your faith is represented in your works. You see now the major problem with this statement is that we try to take a short cut and just do the works, thereby proving our faith. But know that it is possible for works to live without faith, but faith cannot live without works. Although that is a relative comparison itself, because I know many people who believe but they don’t believe enough for their faith to have an impact on their lives, for it to be seen in their works, but it is there nonetheless. Now is that faith, faith? I think so. But only God can decide that – in other words I am saying that I don’t think that if your faith is not backed up by works that you are not saved. I think you are. I think you have done enough to admit the truth about heaven and hell and who God is, but not enough to have a major impact on your life on earth.

But it is possible to perform works, without believing in God. I know that I always felt like if I wasn’t doing works, that God would look and say, “sorry bud, you haven’t been living out your faith and so you don’t have faith so you don’t cut it.” but that is not the case, because even when I was doing works to prove my faith, I was still no more or less saved. Why? Because it has nothing to do with me doing anything that I am saved. It has got to do with a choice God made to save me and it has to do with a choice I made to believe that He saved me. That is it. The rest is all about the journey. Even if you start the journey but never, get past mile 1, you are there. The rest for me is how far along this journey of learning to love and have faith I get. But no longer do I have a drive to take this journey because I am scared that if I stop I will get kicked out the car, but it is now about learning about my dad, growing in a relationship with Him, learning about love and becoming the son that He has called me. Revelation: God calls us sons before we become sons through our faith or our works.

So now I can go work in order to love, draw near to Him and attain life in abundance. I don’t have to work to ‘justify and prove my faith.” God doesn’t tell me to prove my faith. He says all I have to do is have faith in Him and declare it. I don’t have to prove it. I must declare it, which I have done, but I don’t have to go on proving it throughout my life, proving that I still believe. I do believe and that is it. Sometimes I believe more than other times, but I still believe. Or I should rephrase that and say at some times I am more obedient in my faith, but it doesn’t change the fact that I believe.

Come now, is this really going to happen – living with God but locking yourself in your room and blocking your ears? Yes! It happens all the time!
So many of us are ‘saved’ in that we have accepted salvation, saved from hell, but are never ‘saved’ of our pain, hardship and struggles, because we go lie in our room in our dad’s house, close the door and block our ears. Or we go around looking at what our brothers and sisters are doing. I just realised something – judging others is bad for our wellbeing. Not only because it makes us act in an antagonising way to others, but also because we spend our whole lives trying to see what is wrong with others, and in so doing we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to see what is wrong or hurtful in our own lives and then to bring healing to that. We are depriving ourselves of the healing God has for us by focusing on others faults the whole time. You cannot do anything about the faults in others, but you can allow God to do something about your own faults – as long as you are prepared to find them, bring them into the light and deal with them.

So if we go lie in our rooms, will we still go to heaven? Yes. God is always our Father and that doesn’t change no matter how horrible you are as a son. Only if you say you don’t want to be His son anymore and stop believing it, will you no longer be a son. But as soon as you call He is there again to take you back. He is always there, ready for your call.

Being a bad son, being a son who doesn’t obey, being a son who avoids His dad’s voice is still a son. He is just an unhappy son. He is just a son who is not experiencing life in abundance as God intended once we are saved. He is just a son who will not know the joy of life, freedom or relationship with their Father and the Creator of the universe. But He is still a son. He is still a son, and no less worthy a son than a good son, for a good son is also not worthy.

That is why I believe the message of Christianity should start on the message of healing of hurts, power to conquer sin (which leads to hurt), forgiveness and acceptance.
It should start with calling on Him.
It should be about being set free.
This should happen before being told about, “doing His work or trying to be good.”

We should not sell ‘being a good Christian’ as an imperative to one’s salvation, to prove one is a Christian. The two are unrelated issues. We need to sell that ‘God wants to heal your pain and give you life in abundance.”

Romans 10:11 anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame
Romans 10:13 everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved

Has God comforted me in my pain, allowing me to comfort others and point to Him to find comfort?
Yes I have come searching for healing and truth and have found it through:
Theophostic prayer ministry
Meeting with my mentor
The men’s conference

I guess the difficult thing is how long it takes for healing to come. I have been struggling with anxiety for over 2 years now. But I know that I will eventually be healed completely and through the healing of this wound, I will be able to authentically, honestly and confidently point people to Jesus.

The information I give to people will be first hand information and not second hand or ‘I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend…”

I think as well God has used all this to show me how vital it is for me to remain close to Him and seek Him fervently. I think if I had sought Him more fervently from the start, I would have been further along in the healing process.
But also I should have rested in Him when He was calling me to rest. I am looking forward to rest.

Can I trust God – to lead me into life in abundance on earth and for the safekeeping of my salvation?

There is and has always been a certain amount of doubt in whether I can trust Him on these most important matters. I feel like I need to constantly be taking stock of where I am at and what I am doing wrong.
I think half is because of fear and half is because of pride.
Fear because until now I have believed that I will be doing something so wrong that it will get me thrown into hell.
Now introspection and reflection in themselves are good things, but not when they’re fear driven. I think though that now I have learnt, and need to begin practising in my life, that there is nothing I can do that will get me thrown out of my Father’s house.

It is kind of like what Ray said to me – when David Beckham is playing soccer, He just plays. You cannot stop in the middle of the game to make decisions and evaluate the best option. You just have to go with what you decide in that split second. Sometimes you go the wrong way or make a bad pass. But that will never get you kicked off the team. You see I am on this team and I will never get kicked off. Because God doesn’t pick players based on how good they are. He picks them based on His willingness to be on the team. If you want to be on the team, you’re on. You don’t have to be a good player; you don’t have to train or exercise or even run. You can just stand on the field watching as the game passes you by, or you can even sit on the bench.
But why be on the team if you aren’t going to play? By all means we can not play if that’s what we want, but it is nicer to play.

When you’re playing it is not the time to be stopping and making decisions. Just play. If you mess up, you’re still on the team. Even if you don’t try and have a bad attitude, you’re still on the team. As long as you want to be on the team, you’re on. So just play. Yes, be aware when you play, but PLAY!

The time to work on your game is at training. Also there are sessions with the doctor to heal your injuries. At practice you sharpen your skills and learn how to make the best decisions in certain situations. The more you practice, the better you play and the more you enjoy it. But no matter how well you play or how much you practice, the only reason you are on the team is because the coach has said you can play if you want – it has nothing to do with how well you play.

So the reason for playing is for your enjoyment, the enjoyment of others and of the coach.

The second reason why I have doubted this is because of pride.
Pride because I always want to be seen as the best player on the team. I want to feel important.
I guess I also always have believed that I am better than other people on the team because I am a better player and because I train harder and can score goals etc.
I guess though that when I realise that no one cares how good I am and it makes no difference to my status on the team, then there is no incentive to be the best or to look down on others as being worse players than me. Then I can just focus on playing and enjoying it, getting to know my team mates and listening to the coach.

Pride and fear – life’s biggest thieves.