What kind of fear do people have of God, if any? It seems most Christians seem to think that fearing God means, “If I’m not good, God’s going to put me in the eternal naughty corner.” They’re quick to assume that others who don’t live as good as they do are damned.
I heard someone once say to her siblings, right after the death of their mother, “At least we know Mom is in heaven now because she was a good person.” This was said by someone who once was a Sunday School teacher. She must have over-looked such verses as:
Matthew 19:17, “And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”
Romans 3:12, “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
Romans 7:18, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”
Those are just a few statements out of many that God has made in His word in regards to how “good” anyone can be. People who never experience the torment behind never feeling “good enough,” are missing Noah’s Ark. No one will come to everlasting peace unless God first draws them.
John 6:44, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
They cannot come because it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure [Philippians 2:13].
Once God has humbled a person to will and to do of His good pleasure, that horrible revelation of how spiritually rotten s/he is (that only those whom God has adopted to take home to live with Him are able to experience) gets replaced with the awareness of how infinitely loving God is!
Only when people do what is good and right in God’s eyes, solely out of love for God, do they know He will never abandon them no matter what they might foolishly do and what they have done. King David, of the Old Testament, did some quite bad things (adultery and murder), but yet David was a man after God’s heart!
The world, with it’s New Age theology, is opposite from God in regards to the effects that wrongful behavior has on the person who is being sinful. Without salvation, one becomes desensitized to repeated acts of sin. This is why the world is becoming so decadent. With salvation, one becomes sensitized to sinful behavior. In a child of God, his own wrong behavior brings it’s own form of discipline. God might use someones stubbornness to teach them a lesson while here on earth, but never will He punish them by ceasing to love them. In fact, the more a true Christian sins, the less s/he wants to! It’s impossible for a true believer to be afraid of death (dying, maybe; death, no)! . . . but, it’s also possible for evil people to not fear death too! That’s because the devil is the master counterfeiter of the things which God designs.
New Age theology actually began in the Garden of Eden when Eve was fooled by the serpent [Satan] into believing she could have eternal life and be wise (but only in her own eyes). Her once innocent free will led her to rebel against the truth. She didn’t want the truth. She wanted to deceive herself into thinking she knows what is good and what is evil; she wanted to be her own god. Isn’t that what we still witness happening today?
Genesis 3:4-6, “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
People, by nature, love only what is and who is lovable. By nature, man doesn’t even find God lovable. Without the grace of God, he sees God (and those with God’s Holy Spirit abiding within them) as being repulsive. That’s because man’s kind of love really isn’t love at all. Real love is supernatural. It does not ultimately seek to satisfy self. It returns good for evil. Supernatural love trusts God for all things, situations, and people. It is content with God’s love even if that means getting nothing from this world but misery.
Satan has sold the lie that happiness means acquiring what this world has to offer. People don’t know what permanent contentment is. It’s claimed we’ve never had it so good with all that now exists to be sought after. Odd how now that there is so much to have in this world, nothing satisfies for very long before a new craving comes along.
What does our modern way of life have to do with how well we behave ourselves before God comes to pick His kids up from this world’s day care? It really does not welcome any child-like behavior that enjoys projects done for the glory of God. What it does foster are activities that encourage “socially correct and acceptable behavior” according to what modern society dictates.
