God Will Not Be Mocked – Message 1

Gal 6:7 - Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.

This is the first in a series of messages on how God’s creation is mocking the creator (God). Like in all the following messages in this series, I will start out emphasizing how God wants His creation to see the full depth of His love for us, but since most people (including most believers) are so emerged in loving themselves, they can’t see or even understand God’s agape love that He has for us. Since most people don’t have true agape love in their hearts because Christ Jesus has not made His home with them, all that God is able to work with is their selfishness and fear. God is total love, but He is also total righteousness and totally holy. With God, living a holy and righteous life in not an option for the people that will inherit His eternal kingdom, He demands holy and righteous living. This holy and righteous living can only be done through the love of Jesus Christ permeating every aspect of our heart and soul. This permeating of our heart and soul with His love is accomplished when we are truly born again. Since we can’t see this agape love in most people – we then have to also assume that most people are not truly born again. Most people really don’t have the capacity to understand God’s love since agape love is given by His Spirit and since the Holy Spirit is not in most people, the only thing they do understand is love of self and the protection of their selves. This is why we need the “fire and brimstone” messages to come back.

Let’s first look at who will inherit God’s eternal kingdom (heaven).

Gal 5:19-21 - The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Gal 6:7-9 - Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

So what does the scripture verses above really say to us? They say very plainly that if we do or think any of the sinful acts of the sinful nature, then the sinful nature is still in us and that we are still being controlled by that sinful nature and not God’s nature. If this sinful nature hasn’t been put to death because we have been unwilling to let it die, we will then suffer in the second death as if Christ never died on the Cross for us and we will be thrown in to an everlasting Hell where there is eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. This should scare anyone towards God, unless they don’t believe in God, Heaven, or Hell. For the ones that don’t believe in God, Heaven, and Hell, there is no hope for them until they do start believing in these spiritual things. Whether a person believes in Hell or not, if they are not truly born again, they are on an automatic trip to Hell because of their own disbelief.

But what about those people, like my dad or mother, or my sister or brother, or my friend that I loved so much that said they were a Christian, but they were still committing acts of sin up to the day they died? If these people knew they were sinning, but did not repent of those sins and stop sinning, then this would clearly indicate that they never made it to the point of true salvation by being truly born again. Anyone that isn’t sanctified to the point of totally dying to the selfish nature before they physically die will go to Hell upon God’s judgment.

There are no second chances after our physical death. What ever nature we die with will be the nature that we are judged on. If we are still being controlled by the sinful nature when we die, then the sinful nature is still alive in us and it is that nature that will send us to Hell. God can’t and will not let any sinful thing into His eternal kingdom. If we have died to all our sinful nature and are living by His Spirit’s nature in us, then we will be given the crown of life and we will enter His gates of heaven with much thanksgiving. What ever nature that is alive in us when we die, that is the nature that will continue on with our soul into eternity. The choice to what nature we are going to live and die with must be made in this life. Again – there is no changing our mind after we die – there are no second chances after our physical death. There is no purgatory or any such time that God does the finishing touches on our soul after death. There are countless scriptures in God’s Word that emphasize the need for us to be ready for the day that Christ returns for us (when we die), but I will end this message with the scripture below.

Luke 16:19-31 - There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'

'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

We have Jesus that was resurrected from the dead and people still don’t believe. Here I am - proclaiming the truth – who is going to have ears to listen and not be sent to Hell like the rich man in the scripture above

For the love of God – Listen to the truth – there is only one truth.

Michael Reid

Becoming a Christian is a process

As I write these messages, I am very concerned that these Biblical truths are not being accepted as God’s truth like they were in the days of Christ’s apostles. The Gospel of Christ has been so watered down that most people can no longer accept the true Biblical truth because they have been taught and believe another truth (really deception) and believing it for many years, in most cases for generations. Back in the day of the apostles, people believed in part because of the miracles they saw the apostles and other Spirit filled believers do. So I’m praying for a miracle from God that would open up the eyes and ears of our current day church leaders and all the Christians around the world. A real revival back to God’s truth is needed.

As I was recently giving a message at a church service, I said “In the Old Testament, God worked most of His miracles in plain view of His people so they would believe, but in the New Testament, God works most of His miracles on the inside of man so each one of us will believe by feeling Him and His power on the inside of us”. This made me realize that there is a miracle I can talk about to help you realize what I am saying is the truth. It is the miracle that has happened in my life. How God has completely regenerated the sinful man in me into being Christ like. Everything I have written in my previous writings has happened to me and is so alive in me that I cannot hold it in; I have to proclaim this to anyone that will listen. I know this sounds prideful to some people, but this was not of my doing, it was only of God’s power. He has done it all. I want to tell you that I am a nobody, again I say I am a nobody that God has raised up to do His will through His Spirit. So if he was willing to use me, a nobody, He can do this for anybody willing to submit to His Lordship. This is what God has called all Christian to become and do.

In getting back to the process of becoming a Christian, we must know what the final result is, and that is becoming a real or true Christian. As stated in my previous writings a true Biblical Christian is totally devoted and sold out to God. He/she has committed everything that they hold valuable and has sacrificed it to God’s glory and work. A true Christian is a willing slave to God’s will. He/she is no longer having any selfish desires, but only loving desires toward God first and then to all people. A true Christian is always working at bringing others to a true relationship with God (making disciples). He/she loves God with all their heart, soul, and mind. True Christians know the only way to God’s eternal kingdom is through Christ, so they are fervently proclaiming the Gospel with the gifts they have been given. They know that people that are receiving a deception instead of the true Gospel is devastating to those people God loves. It is a spiritual life and death situation with eternal consequences. True Christians are not friends with the world, lovers of money, lovers of things, or lovers of themselves. True Christians always think of others needs above themselves. They are praising God the Father and Jesus continuously through out their day.

So, now knowing what a Christian is, we must admit that most of us aren’t at this holy or sanctified point at the time of our first acceptance of Christ. We must be made holy and perfected to being Christ like through a process call “sanctification”. Our society has been called the microwave society; we want everything to happen right now, no waiting, instant gratification. This is not how God usually works or what we can usually be able to do. When we first accept Christ as our savior, we usually can’t accept Him as total Lord of our life. The Bible says we must accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The savior part is easy to accept because we are looking forward to receiving eternal life, but God’s Lordship of our life is required to be a true Christian and to really have eternal salvation. Lordship of our life is what most of us will not relinquish to anyone, even God. Some churches only preach and teach of Jesus being our Savior and not having to have total Lordship over our lives. This is a big and devastating deception. If Jesus is not allowed to have total control or Lordship over every part of a person’s life, there is no salvation for that person until he/she does. This is the reason God always puts the word Lord before Savior in the Bible.

This sanctification process to become a true Christian (born again) can take many years, sometime most of our life. Some people only come to this right before they die. Some people, even though they are in this process, never come to the point of becoming a true Christian and are lost to the devil because of their unwillingness to submit to Jesus’ total Lordship over their lives.

How long it takes to become a true Christian (born again) is totally dependent on our amount of faith in God and how much baggage we’ve have picked up in our life that we have to get rid of or let go of. When we are a child, especially in a Christian home, we have no baggage or only a little baggage to get rid of and when our parents tell us about Jesus through gospel messages and stories, we can easily have the faith to come to Jesus as Lord and Savior, because we believe what ever our parents tell us because we totally trust them. This is why Jesus says we must come to Him as a child.

If we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior as a child, we still have to persevere at keeping Him as our Lord and Savior. If we don’t, we must then get back to that point of submission or we still might be lost.

When we come to Christ as an adult, we already have a lot of sinful baggage. By this time we have already learned we cannot trust anyone, including God. We have learned to be very selfish through our sinful nature controlling us. The older we are when we come to Christ, the more excess sinful baggage we have to get rid of. All this selfish baggage that has been wound up into our life has to be unwound and this takes time and the power of God Holy Spirit to do it. This baggage must be gotten rid of by the process of sanctification and repenting. The flight to God’s eternal heaven does not carry any sinful baggage. We must let go of all this baggage before we board the flight. If we stay bound to our sinful baggage, we will not be allowed on the flight to heaven, but we will be picked up with the multitudes and thrown into the fiery bottomless pit, baggage and all.

May God’s grace be with you – Michael Reid