CHOOSE LIFE

Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins. (NLT Ephesians 2:1)

I never felt as though I were dead. I thought I had things pretty good. I had friends and family and fun times. Life was filled with work and hobbies. Every day was busy from start to end. What is this dead stuff? I believed in God and knew He was always present in my life, but as an observer. When I realized I had done something wrong or was thinking about doing it, I hoped God was looking into someone else's life instead of mine.

Like most, I thought our lives were judged on our goodness and if we passed the test we would go to heaven instead of the alternative, hell. As humans we were basing good and bad on what we as a culture had decided was good and bad. As the years went on we moved things from one category to another and assumed God was doing the same.

As the years moved on, more and more bad became good and sometimes it was a blurry line between the two sides. Sin was what was defined in some list somewhere. Everyone seemed to have different lists. Catholics had a different list than most Protestants I knew, and Jews had another. We all tried to live within our own list and envied some of the things on another list or gloated about what we could do and they could not.

I had heard about Jesus and new it was written that He was crucified for our sins. We celebrated Easter and Christmas and went to church every Sunday. What I did not know is what Jesus was to me. I did not have a relationship with Him. The emptiness in me was being filled with new things. Often having them was more important than using them. As each was obtained, it was fun for a while, then another would top the most desired list. It was like a never ending need to have. I believed the adage "He who dies with the most toys wins."

When our housekeeper invited us to attend that healing school in 1991, I knew Dianne would be healed of Crohn's Disease. What I did not know is how that day would affect the rest of our lives. Both of us accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior that day. We began a personal relationship with Jesus.

Dead was no longer just a physical state. Now that I was alive in Him, I understood what dead really was. Not having a relationship with Him was being dead; dead to Him. As our relationship with Him grows, we grow. We become more Christ like in our thoughts, actions, and deeds. This is all possible because we were given the chance to choose life over death and we took it.