What's the Point?

Monday, May 7, 2018

1st John 5:13: I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

What does God want for us? What's the "end game?" What is the point of believing? I think God answers all those questions for us in this single verse.

People seem to forget that point. We're so busy chasing our dreams and our goals for life and what we want to accomplish. In a sense, we're trying to write our names in the record books by piling on achievement after achievement.  We are too busy and stressing ourselves out to the max. OR, we are so despondent and despairing because we have done nothing but fail. We are so hurt by life that we can't see anything but the pain and sorrow and trying to find ways to mask those pains and sorrows. What this means is, we are way too focused on the here and now and not enough about the hereafter.

God has always been focused on the now AND the hereafter. God is focused upon YOU joining Him there some day. Our here and now is not to be focused upon ourselves. It is to be focused upon God, what He has done for us. God saved us from our sins by means of what His Son, our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ did. Jesus sacrificed Himself so that we would be free from, as Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes, "chasing after the wind" of every human goal and desire. Through faith in Jesus and what He did, we see life on earth as a means to the beginning, the beginning of eternal life. Along with that, we see what Jesus did, not for Himself, but for others.

So what's the point? It's this. We believe in Jesus. Jesus gave forgiveness of sins and opened the way to everlasting life with Him. When we believe that, our attitude to the stuff here on earth changes. Our life becomes more centered on serving others for the sake of Jesus. Our goal is going to heaven and what we do is based upon that. God equip our faith, encourage our life, and lead us to engage the world with eternal life, Amen.