Three Oranges: God's Will for EveryoneSample

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One big hurdle for our relationship with God

You’ll never figure out what God wants you to do with your life until you allow Him to change who you are. Being must precede doing, and begins with relationship.

We all have made mistakes, but more than that, we have all deliberately chosen to ignore God’s commands and fulfill our own desires instead. This walking away from God is called sin. As James says, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

Our culture scoffs at the idea of sin. We call our disobedience “no big deal”; because “everybody makes mistakes.” But in God’s eyes our sin is big stuff. It’s serious. It’s so serious to a holy God that blood, death and sacrifice were required to reverse the curse of sin. Thankfully, God himself stepped in with the necessary sacrifice, offering grace-filled, permanent remedy for our sin. Jesus Christ lived the life we couldn’t—a life completely without sin—and paid the price for us, providing the blood, death and sacrifice required by God. That’s how our sins can be forgiven and our relationship with a holy God secured. By placing our faith in Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death for our sin, we are saved from God’s wrath. Jesus didn’t die just for “people in general.” He died for me. He died for you.

Our relationship with God as a son or daughter begins when we trust Jesus for salvation. That is God’s will for us. How do I know? His word tells me:

This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.

This might sound clear to those of you who are “well churched”, but it wasn’t to me. I did not grow up going to church. Before I came to know Christ, I tried to balance the scales with good deeds to outweigh my sins. But that was not relationship. That was not being; that was doing. I didn’t have a clue that God wanted me to be in relationship with Him.