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Tending the Garden

Good News for You

Laura's Testimony

In this world full of bad news, calamities, sorrows, betrayal, and heartbreak, isn't some Good News what we'd all like to hear?

I'd like to share with you some Good News I heard some years ago, after I was already all grown up and a parent.

The Good News is that of Jesus Christ. Oh, you may say, you know all about Jesus. Or maybe to you He's just a name, a figure in history.  It doesn't matter.  You see, I had grown up going to church all my life and had probably heard the Good News many times.  But somehow I hadn't heard it with my heart, so in fact I was just like someone who had never heard it at all.  So let me start out at the beginning  –  wherever you are, whoever you are, this Good News is for you.

The Good News is that God has a wonderful plan for the life of each of us.  He offers us eternal life as a free gift.  And by eternal life, I mean the sure and certain knowledge that when I die I will go to heaven and having a joyful, fulfilling spiritual relationship with God while living here on earth, a life full of meaning and purpose.

How is it with you?  May I stop and ask you a question?  Better yet, take a small piece of paper and write down your answer to this question (inter-active is more interesting than just reading, and having your answer on paper may help in understanding as we go along).  Here's the question:

Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for certain,

100%, that if you were to die tonight that you would go to heaven, or is that

assurance, that certainty, something you would say you're still working on

or thinking through?   Think about it briefly and write down your answer.

Yes?  No?  Maybe?  Think so?

It's important that each of us has an answer to this question.  And there's another question equally as important:

Suppose you were to die today and stood before God and He were to say

to you  –  “Why should I let you into My heaven?”  –   What would you say?

Please write down your answer to this question also.

Granted, that may be a little more thought provoking question than the first.  What would you say?  What do you think you'd say?  Do you think there might be some entrance requirements?  Would you perhaps think, as I once did, that you had to obey the Ten Commandments and do your best?  Or do you really just not know what you'd say?  These were very tough questions for me before I received the assurance of eternal life.  Here's how I came to the point of being able to answer those questions.

I grew up in a major Christian denomination and went to Sunday School, went to church, even taught Sunday School.  And as I was growing up, there were only three things that I wanted from life.  I wanted a good marriage and I wanted to be a parent and I wanted to be happy.  I grew up the oldest in a family of six children  –   too many kids, too little money, too little space.  I just wanted to get out on my own, and I was sure with every stepping stone on my journey of life that I was getting closer to my goals of marriage, parenthood, and happiness.  With my parents' sacrifice, scholarships and loans, I managed to go to college, and after graduation I got married.  And of course, I expected my spouse to make me happy.  Forget that were both busy trying to grow up ourselves, which made for some interesting learning experiences. But overall we've had a good marriage and God has blessed us with a lovely daughter, a fine son-in-law, and two beautiful grandchildren.

So I had two of my goals, but I wasn't happy.  And I kept searching for happiness, in so many ways, kind of like the old song  –  in too many places.  I tried hobbies.  I tried diets. I tried advanced education.  Geographic, career, and various life changes all brought temporary happiness, but to no avail. I thought if I could get my life together and be a good marriage partner, parent, church member, person  –  that somehow God would be pleased and I'd finally be happy.  But still this thing called happiness seemed to elude me.

And then one day  –  it was in the year I turned 40  –  a friend shared some wonderful, amazing news with me and I received the assurance of eternal life.  All the stuff I'd learned, studied and sung in church and Sunday School came to have meaning, real meaning.  And I found something  –  I'll call it joy  –  that has replaced my desire for what I used to call happiness.  We hear a lot about joy these days, the joy of the Lord.  I'm here to tell you it's real.
 

It's the joy of knowing that even if today is a happy day and tomorrow is a sad day, that deep in my heart is the knowledge and the assurance that God will never leave me or forsake me and that He is faithful.

Even through devastating family crises, illnesses, death, my joy in the Lord has never been taken from me because I know that I have eternal life here-on-earth and of course when I die.  And this is what my friend helped me to discover.

Let me review for you what I learned.  I learned that heaven, eternal life, here on earth and in heaven forever, is a free gift.

The Bible says, “ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal

life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”    Romans 6. 23

And if it's a gift, I can't earn it or deserve it,

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from

yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Ephesians 2. 8,9

Like any gift, the gift of eternal life must be received and accepted.  No amount of payment, large or small can be made to receive a gift or it is no longer a gift  –   the recipient of a gift can never be a participant in its purchase.  Think of a gift you have received.  If you had tried to help pay for it in any way, even some small way, it would no longer have been a gift.  You might even have badly hurt the feelings of the giver.  So it is with eternal life.  We must receive it as a free gift.

So all the things I was trying to do to be pleasing to God, to make myself acceptable and therefore to be happy, were not the way to do it, because God, in His grace  -  unmerited, undeserved, unearned favor  -  had already offered me the gift of eternal life.  You see, God loves us so much He wants
us to have eternal spiritual life with him, and that Love is His only motive.

God's grace and why this gift has to be free became clearer to me when I understood what the Bible says about man (and woman).  It says that  we are sinners    –  the wrong things we do, say, think  –  the small ones as well as the big ones  –  and the good things we leave undone that would be in agreement with how God wants us to live.  It's all sin,  something terrible that separates us from God.

The Bible says, “. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ” –

Romans 3.23

That means that every person who ever lived is a sinner, even the very best people we can think of.  And because we are sinners, we cannot save ourselves, because God's standard for entrance into heaven is perfection.

Jesus Himself says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Matthew 5. 48

And all this came into even sharper focus when I looked at what the Bible says about God.  I know God loves me.  He is merciful and does not want to punish me.  He loves me with an everlasting love.  The Bible says that.

The Bible even says, “. . . God is love.”    1 John 4. 8b

But that same Bible also tells me that very same God is holy and just and must punish sin and that,

“Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished.”  Exodus 34. 7b

Because God is not only a God of love but a God of holiness and justice and righteousness, my sin  –   must be punished.  You know how much sin I have to be punished?  Even if I were good enough that I sinned only three times a day, if I could be that good  –  only three wrong thoughts, words or deeds.  That would be a near perfect, and definitely unattainable, day for me.  Well, at only three sins a day, that's about a thousand sins a year. In a normal lifetime that would be about 70,000 sins  –  and yet God says I have to be perfect.  In fact, God says there will be no sin in heaven.

That's why I couldn't save myself, why no person can, in his or her own power, meet God's standard of perfection and make it to heaven.  God doesn't grade on a curve.   Looks like I had a problem, a big dilemma.  On one hand God loves me and doesn't want to punish me, but on the other hand He hates my sin and must punish it.

But because God loves me, he solved my problem in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Recently I talked with a pleasant young lady named Jennifer on the phone (I was placing a  catalog mail order) –  When I told her I live on Ephesus Church Road, I had to spell it, and I said,  “Well, that's where the people called Ephesians lived  –  are you familiar with the book of Ephesians in the Bible?”  She said no and I said, “Jennifer, do you read the Bible?”  She said, “Well, no I don't.  I have two little kids and I know I should, but I don't.”  So I said, "When we finish this order, maybe we can chat about it."   So when we finished the order, I asked her a couple questions.  I asked her that question I asked you a little while ago and she said she was pretty sure she'd go to heaven when she dies.

And then I asked her the other question you answered a while ago. I asked her,  "Suppose you were to die today and stood before God and He were to say to you  –  ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’  –  what would you say?" Then she said she'd tell God she's tried to be a good person and do her best  (just like me, all those years).  Then I asked her, “Jennifer, where does Jesus fit into all of this?”  And she said to me, “Well, He's my last resort.  When nothing else that I can do works, then I turn to Him.”  At that point I said, “Well, that's exactly where I was for many years, Jennifer, but what I've learned now is that Jesus is where I'd start.” I asked Jennifer if I could send her a brief letter and maybe a couple things to read and perhaps she could call me back and we could talk some more about it.

You see, folks, I learned that Jesus is where you start.

The Bible says,  "In the beginning was the Word”, (and that's Jesus).

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word

was God . . . and the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us . . ."

John   1. 1, 14

 So Jesus came to earth, and all the stuff you've heard about Him is true  –  great teacher, worked miracles, led a perfect life.  But here's what He really came to earth for, the greatest transaction that has ever occurred or will occur in the history of the world.

Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty for

our sin and purchase a place for us in heaven, which He offers to us as a gift,

a free gift.  That's what He came for.  Because of grace, God's riches at

Christ's expense  –  G-R-A-C-E.   Here's what He did on the cross.

Picture if you would a book  –  big, small, hardback, doesn't matter.  Better yet, lay a book on your right hand with your palm up.  Imagine your hand is you and the book is a record of your life.  And in that book is everything you've ever said, done, thought  –  all of it, the good, the bad, the wonderful, and the terrible.  Oh, there's lots of good there, but there's also bad stuff  –  stuff we called sin a few minutes ago, stuff that God hates because of the harm and heartache it brings to us.

Now lift your left hand high in the air, palm down.  Imagine your left hand is God.  Now, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a relationship with God just as close as your two hands clasping each other?  But wait, there's something between your hands.  It's that book we imagined as the record of your life.  And in that book is your sin, all of it, past, present, and future.  Just as the book prevents your hands from clasping each other, so does the sin in our lives prevent us from having a relationship with God while we're on earth and prevents us from going to heaven when we die.

Now bring your left hand down even with your right hand, which is holding the book, the “Record of Your Life.”  Let's imagine your left hand is Jesus, coming to earth.  Now, we're ready for you to demonstrate for yourself just what Jesus did on the cross.  Lift your right hand, bring it across in front of your face, and transfer the book to your palm-up left hand, deliberately and heavily.  Feel the weight of the book on your left hand.  Think of this verse as you do it:

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to his (her)

own way; and  the LORD (God) has laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquity of us

all.”    Isaiah 53. 6

What you have just demonstrated for yourself is Jesus taking your sin and the sin of the whole world upon Himself on the cross.  All the ugliness, all the pain, all the evil, betrayal, broken promises, meanness, acts of injustice and crime, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, profanity, sexual immorality   –  you name it  –  all the "stuff" in your book and mine, and everyone's.  It was all laid on Jesus on the cross. He took our punishment for our sin.  He paid the price. He did whatever was necessary.  He was separated from God (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?”  Luke 15. 34)  so that we might live together with God in heaven forever, so that we might have a spiritual relationship and fellowship with God.

Now look at your right hand.  It's empty of the sins of the record book.  Drop the book (illustrating how God removes our sins from His memory).  Clasp your hands together, the left one on top.  Imagine God meeting you at your point of need, you reaching up to God.  See your hands joined together, as you and God are joined together for all eternity  –  eternal life  –  because of what Jesus did.

Jesus died on the cross so He could offer us the gift of eternal life.  But like any gift, as we said earlier, it must be received.  The gift of eternal life is received by faith,   –  saving faith.  Not the kind of faith that merely understands Who Jesus is, the historical facts you can read in books.  We call that head knowledge or intellectual assent.  It's very good to know.  The more we know about Jesus, the more we can understand how much He loves us, but do not mistake just knowing about Jesus with trusting Him or having a relationship with Him.

Saving faith is also not the kind of faith that encourages us to pray when the kids are sick, when we have to travel or fly, or we have a big decision to make about a move or a job, or when our finances are in trouble.  God wants us to exercise that faith.  It's important too, but it's what we call temporal, temporary, or here-on- earth faith.  It has to do with our time here on earth; it will not be needed after we die.  Likewise, do not confuse temporal faith with saving faith.

But the faith with which you reach out and receive the gift of eternal life is saving faith, trusting in Jesus Christ and Him alone for salvation, Jesus first and only for eternal life.

“. . . Believe (trust) on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved . . .”

Acts 16. 31

Would you do one more brief demonstration to help you understand receiving the gift of eternal life?  Is there a chair in the room, besides the one you're already sitting in?  A sofa?  Or something else you could sit on?  Okay,  let's imagine that other chair, etc. is Jesus Christ.  And let the chair you are sitting in represent yourself.  Now, in your spiritual life, which chair have you trusted to hold you up?  Is Jesus just a figure in history, a picture in a Bible story book, or at some time in your life did you spiritually get up out of your chair and transfer your trust for everything  –  for all eternity  –  to Him?  Did you ever spiritually get up out of the “chair of yourself” and sit in the “chair of Jesus”?  Or, as I realized about myself, are you trusting your good works, your own efforts, to earn you eternal life?  We've already seen that trusting in our own power won't work.  So if Jesus is Who He said He is, and if He did what the Bible says He did, then He must be Lord.  He's not a liar, nor a lunatic, nor just a good person.  He is the Only Answer  for eternal life.

If you have never made that transfer of trust, if you have believed and relied solely on yourself, then right now you can quit trusting in yourself and what you can do for God and trust in what God through Jesus Christ has already done for you.  Why not just get up out of your chair right now and go and sit in the chair we designated as the chair of Jesus.  Notice the movement, the transfer of your weight, the action.  This is what you must do to transfer your trust to Jesus  –  take real action; step out in faith, saving faith.

Does this make sense to you?  If so, would you like to receive the gift of eternal life, right here, right now?  Would you like to stop trusting in yourself and start trusting in Jesus, to turn your life over to Him and begin to know the joy and peace and fellowship of a life with a Friend who will never leave or forsake you?
If you say yes, then you are making the most important decision of your life.

This decision means that you are ready and willing to transfer your trust forever to Jesus, to receive Him as the resurrected and living Christ, Whose Holy Spirit will come into your heart to live with you and guide you forever.  It means you receive Jesus as your Savior.  You receive Him.  The Bible says,

“Here I am!  I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and

opens the door, I will come in and eat with him (or her), and he with Me”

Revelation 3. 20

Jesus will come into your heart.  All you have to do is invite Him.  Your decision also means you are accepting Him as Lord of your life and that you will repent, turn from, those things that are displeasing to God and allow Him to change you to be the person He wants you to be.  Oh, I know it's not easy to give up control, but, believe me, the more you allow Jesus to be in control, the more He will transform your life and replace despair, confusion, lack of purpose and everything else negative with joy, assurance, peace, sense of purpose and all the positive benefits of His grace and forgiveness.

Eternal life is a gift, offered by Jesus Himself, and received by individually, personally exercising saving faith in Who Jesus is and what He has done for us, individually, on the cross.  And if you're ready to make this commitment to trust Jesus in your heart, then I encourage you to pray this prayer with me, from your heart.

“Dear Lord Jesus.  I know that I'm a sinner and I cannot save myself. I

understand now that because of Your grace You came and died on the

cross to pay the penalty for my sins and purchase a place for me in

heaven, which You are offering to me as a free gift.  I know there's

nothing I can do to earn or deserve this gift, but Jesus, because You are

offering it, because I believe and trust in who You are and what You did,

I'm reaching out and accepting it right now.  Come into my heart, Lord

Jesus.  Come in and be my Savior, come in and be my Lord.  Please help

me to turn over every aspect of my life to You.   I accept the gift of

eternal life right now.  Thank You for this gift.  Thank you for Your love

and forgiveness.  Help me to turn from the things in my life that are

displeasing to You.  I repent of those things and I give You control of my

life to change me to become more every day the person You want me to

be.  In Your Name, I pray.”

And now, Dear Father in heaven, I thank You that if the person reading this has for the very first time prayed that prayer, that he or she will understand, and will believe what You have said here, and that this precious person will repent and turn his or her life over to You and will from here on experience the joy of knowing Your love and that You will provide for every need, and that although there may not be all happy days that there can be joy every day in You.  Please give your new child the absolute assurance of salvation.  Thank You in Jesus' Name.  Amen.

Yes, dear readers, it all starts with Jesus.  He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  And no one comes to the Father (God) except through saving faith in Jesus Christ.  If you have received the gift of eternal life through reading this testimony and, by faith, have invited Jesus into your heart, then tell someone immediately.  Find a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church and become a responsible, participating member of God's “Forever Family.”

You may also want to log on to Evangelist Billy Graham's “Steps to Peace With God” web site at http://www.billygraham.org/spiritualhelp/steps.asp for additional information and guidance.

If you need help finding a church, or if you would like to talk more about God's wonderful plan of salvation for your life, please go to the “Feedback” section of this web site.  Leave your name and   e-mail address, and we will get back to you.

We appreciate being able to share this testimony with you and hope it has ministered to you as God has ministered to us by your viewing it.  Every word is true.  The writer was hurting, lost, and separated from God, and only through the love and grace of Jesus Christ came to the assurance of eternal life and a joyous relationship with our Lord.  May God bless you and increase your joy, faith and assurance daily.  And remember, God loves you and so do your sisters and brothers in Jesus. Welcome to God's Forever Family.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5. 8 .