BELIEVE IN ME
““Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:1-6
I was in a public school building for a church service I was attending one day when I saw the gargantuan letters emphatically plastered along the corridor wall. BELIEVE IN ME. Just days later, walking somewhere, I saw a massive advertisement outdoors with these words staring loudly and proudly back at me. IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU.
Only the Lord could have orchestrated all this and by His Spirit brought it to my attention knowing my heart for Him and my endless desire for Him to use the gifts He’s given me to bring forth the messages He gives me. See, in that very same period of time, He had led me to the scriptures above.
I was totally taken aback when I saw the enormous BELIEVE IN ME message on the public school wall. In a public school?! A message about Jesus? That big? That bold? But then it struck me! This wasn’t about Jesus! This was about self! The school administration and teachers were apparently teaching the kids about believing in self. About believing in people. I snapped a photo and headed off to the church service held by a church simply using the school building for the weekly service not about believing in self but about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Shortly after I saw that IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU ad. The same message, wasn’t it? The same message this whole world is giving out. It’s all about YOU. It’s all about ME. It’s all about US. It’s all about people. It’s all about self.
Is this what Jesus Christ preached? Is this why Christ came to earth as a human, lived a perfect sinless life, and died an indescribably heinous death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and was raised from the dead? So we would believe in self, live perfectly sinful lives, and trollop off to eternal torment in hell and the lake of fire forever apart from God? This is the final destination of self, you know, of us without Christ.
For there is NO WAY to be forgiven our sins which separate us from God and to be given an everlasting relationship with Him than THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, by repenting of self and sin, by turning to God and His ways, by learning every single day to DIE TO SELF and to LIVE FOR CHRIST. There is NO OTHER WAY to God the Father than to BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, than to so believe in Him as LORD that we give up our lives for Him, that we live the lives God intended us to live all along, not lives that revolve around self, but lives that are surrendered to Christ.
Self must die daily for us to live daily for Jesus. We need to turn away from this world which teaches us to believe in ourselves and to live for ourselves and turn to God in whose strength and by whose grace through whose love and by whose power we humbly yield ourselves to Him so He can conform us to His image. Jesus sacrificed His self on earth by living perfectly for God the Father and others, and sacrificed His self, His very life, on the cross, so we could repent, believe in HIM, NOT us, follow HIM, not ourselves, not this world, not the devil, and live forever in God’s fellowship.
If we call ourselves Christians, if we wear crosses and carry our Bibles to church every week, if we put up Christmas trees and give out presents, if we pray to God, and we continue to live for self, for worldly pleasure and by worldly standards, modeling to our children and to this world that it’s all about us and all about you by the way we think, feel, talk, and act, looking, talking, acting no differently than the world at large, believing in ourselves, yes, our selves, and living for just that, self, and refuse to turn away from this world’s wickedness, no matter the cost to our flesh and fancies we might pay by turning away from our sins and genuinely living by God’s commands and standards, we are fooling ourselves if we think we are in fellowship with God and on the highway to heaven.
The ONLY WAY to a forever relationship with God is when we repent and BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST as Savior and AS LORD and live our lives accordingly!
This may sound like a harsh message, but it needs to be proclaimed. For this is the Truth of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and if we are preaching and living by and modeling to others the world’s ways of believing in and living for self instead of by and through and for Christ Jesus who is Lord, we are headed rock solidly down the highway to the lake of fire and inviting others to come alongside us.
Belief has a place. In Christ forever. Amen.