Where do you go for answers on important issues? Google? Chat GPT? Your mom? Do you research exhaustively (also known today as “watch YouTube”, lol)? Or do you just throw up your hands and say, “Heaven help us!”? Bookstores have a self-help section, but there are some things you just can’t find on Google or in a self-help book…
There are times in life when we encounter “a life or death situation”. We use that term to describe when the chips are actually down, or when things really matter. It could refer to everything from having surgery to choosing between heaven and hell. Those situations require some extra diligence because, well, they are life or death. Kiefer Sutherland ran into them on every episode of 24.
Your “Life or Death” Situation
The Apostle Paul had a somewhat curious notion about that saying; he believed that all of us are in a “life or death situation”, and that it was actually through the pain of death we are able to experience the true richness of life. He says:
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:20-21 NIV)
(This is Day 55 or so of our walk through the Bible, by the way. You’ve made it to Galatians, the first of Paul’s epistles after Corinthians, the “G” in “God’s Electric Power Company”, an acronym to help you remember Galatians-Ephesians-Philippians-Colossians!)
What About Heaven?
When you think about life or death situations, perhaps the ultimate one revolves around eternity. Is there eternal life? Is there eternal death? There has to be one or the other, don’t you think? People spend a lot of time thinking about it, although Loretta Lynn, Kenny Chesney, Allison Kraus and Mark Lowry have sung a song that says, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die”. It’s a somewhat humorous answer to a somewhat serious question: do you want to go to heaven?
If you interviewed the average person on the street and asked them what they needed to do to get to heaven, they would probably say something like, “Well, if I’m good enough, I think I’ll make it.” “If I have more good deeds than bad deeds, then I hope God lets me in.” These opinions seem logical from the human point of view about justice, and in fact most religion is based on earning God’s favor by doing more good stuff. If I just do enough for God, maybe He’ll like me enough to let me into heaven.
I’m sure that improving oneself or doing good stuff for God is a commendable thing, but Paul says here in Galatians that we have another option.
How Do You Get There?
There’s an amazing secret in this verse, one that I hear echoed in Scripture and teachings all the time. The Christian life is not about doing good, or being righteous, or even about love. It’s about being crucified. It’s about dying to your old self so that you can live in your new one. trading a physical life for a spiritual one. As Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” We are spiritual beings, not spiritual doings.
We will not find permanent joy and peace anywhere in our carnal, physical life. In this world, we can’t rehabilitate the flesh, dress it up, make it better, improve it, or serve God by being busier with it. We get this wrong in church all the time as we try to redeem culture or cash in on the latest marketing fad. Those are fleshly things which will never deliver eternal value. The only way to utilize the flesh is to crucify it and replace it. So what should you do today to improve?
Consider this advice from Jesus: “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23 NIV) When we are able to do that every day, we’ll be able to walk right past that “Self-Help” section. Stop doing things for God and start. Being. God’s.
Getting to Heaven
How do I get to heaven? Everybody wants to know.
If there’s a heaven, surely everybody wants to go!
If I am good enough, then maybe God will let me in,
But I feel sure that I am out because of all my sin.
Maybe if I lose my pride, accept the fact that Jesus died,
and let myself be crucified, then I can be reborn inside!
What Christ gives to me, He can live in me, so that I can be
Living eternally– it’s by believing and not by achieving
That we’ll be receiving and so not be grieving
That this earth we’re leaving. We live by the love of God,
Bought by the Son of God, Born to be one of God’s,
Learning the secret of Heaven by seeing this:
Not getting there on my own, but by being His.
To buy my latest book, Real People, Real Christmas: Thirty-one Days Discovering the Hidden Treasures of the Christmas Story, go here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1729034918/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For Slaying Giants: Thirty Days with David, go here: https://www.amazon.com/Slaying-Giants-Thirty-Devotions-Ordinary/dp/172568327X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535814431&sr=8-1&keywords=Slaying+Giants%3A+Thirty+Days+With+David
To buy my book, Beggar’s Bread, go here: https://www.amazon.com/Beggars-Bread-Devotions-Ordinary-Guy/dp/1535457392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473336800&sr=8-1&keywords=Beggar%27s+Bread
For the Kindle Edition, go here: https://www.amazon.com/Beggars-Bread-Bo-Jackson-ebook/dp/B01K5Z0NLA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473336800&sr=8-2&keywords=Beggar%27s+Bread
