Throughout scripture, God saw the sin of His people, Israel, and punished them. He sent plagues, sores, disease, and exile, all to bring them back into alignment with Him. So many times they started back on the path of righteousness, but their hearts were still focused on human things and soon they fell away.
To be perfectly fair, God could have just wiped sinful humans from the earth. But thankfully, God is not fair, giving us what we deserve. He is just, choosing to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves to allow us the opportunity to choose Him over self and other gods.
He didn’t send Jesus to annihilate us, to judge and condemn us, though our sins against Him deserved it. No. He sent Jesus to rescue us, to bring salvation to us. He wanted us to be safe and sound with Him, and He knew we could not get there on our own.
My friend, Jesus was not just a nice man. He wasn’t just a priest and teacher. He wasn’t just a miracle worker. He wasn’t just an advocate for the poor and sick. He was the only way back into God’s presence. The only way into right standing with God.
The only way.
Today’s world doesn’t like this. They call it exclusivity. Our culture balks at it and rails against it. What many refuse to realize is that God has said ALL are in the very inclusive Club of Sinners that will one day be utterly destroyed—not the kind of inclusiveness we actually want.
God gives us choice. We can recognize Him and choose to live by His will or we can say no to Him and live the way we want to. Both choices have consequences. Choosing Him is eternity with Him: LIFE. Saying no to Him is eternity without Him: DEATH.
God will not choose this for us. We must choose. We make the decision. The decision is simple: LIFE or DEATH. And hear me, not choosing is a choice. To reject Him.
Double standards rule our world, but God has only one: righteousness. If we don’t bear it, we can’t enter His presence.
Today is the day to choose: LIFE or DEATH.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel where you’ll be able to hear more about this devotion and others.
Faye Bryant is an author, coach, and speaker who helps individuals escape the lies of the enemy, live into God’s truth, and build a better life by first feeling, dealing, and healing their way through a stuck future or an abused past, toward a deeper path of purpose, and into the unhackable life of their chosen legacy. Hers is a story of resurrection: from death to life!
