Many are called but God gives you free will to decide if you are chosen

Welcome to episode 248, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 248. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm continuing on Many Are Called and Few Are Chosen, and for this episode I want you to think— maybe not close your eyes if you're driving or working out or doing yard work, but I just want you to imagine God is giving you free will. I want you to imagine that Father God, in all of his infinite wisdom, he is all-knowing, all-seeing, he's everywhere, all the time, all-powerful, and what he chooses to do, he gives you total control over your life. I want you to think about the definition of love. Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, love is not puffed up, love does not behave rudely, Love does not seek its own. Love is not provoked. Love thinks no evil. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things. Love never fails. When I say that God loves you, he loves you enough to allow you, even though he knows everything, he knows every single thing that you're gonna do, the beginning to the end. God sees the end from the beginning. He knows the day that you're gonna die. I know that seems maybe a little bit morbid, but God sees all of this. And if you can imagine the fastest supercomputer that's holding all of everything, that's Father God. He is like a million times faster, smarter, quicker than the supercomputer that they're trying to build here on Earth. There's absolutely nothing that God doesn't know. There's no way you can catch God off guard. So I want you to think about free will. I want to talk today about your free will. God gave you the free will to listen to this podcast, which you're obviously doing if you're still here, and he gave you the free will to pick and choose what you're going to do with your life, what you're going to do today, what you're going to do tomorrow, what about next week, what about next year. God has given you the free will to choose your destination, your path, if you will. And the Bible is clear, he is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. If you allow God to help you, God will light up the path that he wants you walking on. He will make it obvious what he wants you to do But I want you to remember, he gave you free will. And that is so cool. And I, what I love God so much is because he also allows us to make mistakes. God allows us to fail, and God allows us to just step in a hole, fall down, pick ourselves up, and get— he don't make us stay in that hole. And that's where repentance, that's where changing your mind comes in. Now I want you to think about everything that you could have done. If you fell in a hole today, I want you to pick yourself up out of it. If you've fallen down, get up, dust yourself off. We all make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. In fact, I want to encourage you that taking action, you are gonna fall down, you're gonna make mistakes. There's nobody that walks this earth besides Jesus, and he's gone to be at the right hand of the Father. If you are walking here on earth, you're going to make mistakes. So just be okay with it. And we go to Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. You can go to Romans 8:1, and it says there's no condemnation. So if you mess up, if you fall down, just know that God's not sitting there with his arms crossed or with a poker, a heavenly poker, zapping you every time you mess up. That is not God. God is love Satan is the one that condemns you. Satan is the one that continually just berates you mentally. And have you ever wondered when things were going bad why it just seems like it just keeps getting worse? It's because Satan is a punk. He comes to steal, to kill, and destroy. He is not going to take it easy on you when he's got you down. He's an— I almost cussed. Satan is so evil. If you've ever watched someone getting beat up, like on a movie or TV, where they got somebody down and everybody just starts kicking them and hitting them, that is Satan. That is evil. If someone is down and can't defend themselves, that is when Satan piles on. And I want you to know that if you know anybody that's, that's fallen or that's having a hard time or struggling, Satan is not going to let up. And I've heard people, and I've said it before, man, what else can I take? Or what else is going to go wrong? Or saying something stupid like that. Well, here comes Satan with like 4 or 5 other things. It seems like it's overwhelming. And I want to encourage you that that's what's going on too with the spirit of fear, is he is bringing all of this to bear. And he's got the COVID and he's got the mask, and he's got the vaccine, and he's got the unvaxxed. And he just tries to pit everybody against everybody, and he's got all this fear stirred up, and then people just don't think right. If you are scared and if you are trying to fight— and I'm putting air quotes up— you're fighting for your life in this world and with this pandemic and all this mess that's going on, you're not going to make good solid decisions if you don't take a minute to think about, well, who's saying this and what are they saying and why are they saying this? That's why— soapbox moment— the truth never changes. The Word of God. Jesus said, I am the truth, I am the way, I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. The truth of God never changes. And that's why I say you need to get into the word and let the word get into you, because if you can start growing this incorruptible seed inside of you, you will have a reserve for when life comes at you. You will have the fruit of the Spirit. You will have nourishment. You'll have the bread of life. You you will have something in your spirit man. You will have the faith that goes over there and reaches over into the grace of God and pulls out what you need. And this is why Satan does not want you in the word of God, because if you're in the word of God, none of this stuff, none of all this garbage really matters to you. I mean, it can still get your attention, but when you start thinking about what is truly good and what is truly eternal. You're looking at your family. That's why God created the family, because there's just something about the family unit that's the— it's godlike and it holds together. If you've ever seen a grandparent whip out pictures of their grandkids or talk about a parent talking about their kids, it's that family unit that God created. That is love. You can't have 5,000 people that you're closely connected to. That's just not the way God works. It's not the way he created. Now maybe when we get to heaven, we'll be connected, we'll have the mind of Christ, we'll know how to work it, and we can be connected to multiple thousands of people all at the same time. I don't know how that's going to happen. I can't hardly stay connected to 15 or 20 people. But Jesus had 12 disciples. So I want you to know, when you start connecting, this is why your family is so important. And that's why God gave you family, so that you could protect them, so you could pray for them, and so you could love on them. And then kind of branch out. As you look in Acts 1:8, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. Proclaim throughout the world. It's going to start first in Jerusalem then Judea, then Samaria, and then to the othermost parts of the world. If you look at that pattern, Jerusalem is everybody that you know and like, your community, the people that speak your same language, the people that see the world kind of the same way you see the world. Judea is kind of similar, just a little bit of a different maybe twist on it. And then Samaria, that is people in your community And you can kind of see that now with all the race and all of this Black Lives Matter and all this garbage where they're trying to pit one against the other based on the color of our skin, or based on— I mean, why not pick the color of your eyes? Why not? I've got hazel eyes. Why don't I just dislike people that have blue eyes? Why not dislike people that got brown? I mean, it— that's the same thing. I mean, the pigmentation on skin or color of your hair or color of your eyes. That is crazy. We know each person is unique. We'll figure all this out when God opens up this plan to us. But what we need to do, we need to love like God loves. And I don't know why I'm chasing this rabbit. I'm trying to talk about many are called and few are chosen, but I want us to understand that God is amazing. He loves us and he gave us the perfect free will to choose to either follow him and declare his son Lord and Savior or to not. And to have somebody say that God is going to throw certain people into hell, that is not a biblical truth. I do not believe God's going to throw anybody into hell. And that's my whole point of this episode right here, is to say that Father God being love is not going to send anyone to hell. What I am saying is you are going to send yourself to hell. You are going to stand trial at your personal destination trial, and based on the outcome of that trial, you're going to have eternal life or you're going to have eternal damnation. And I think it's just as simple as that. You are not going to have an attorney. You are gonna represent yourself in this courtroom with God, and God is gonna open these books up, and if your name is not written in the Lamb's Book of Life, you are gonna be in big trouble. And I'm just here to tell you, I'm waving my arms, I'm trying to say, please do whatever it takes to get your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life. That is the one book that you want your name in. And the only way to get your name in that book is to declare Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, you shall be saved. I didn't write the book. I didn't write a word in the Bible. I just know that in Romans 10:9-10, that is what Paul says. That's how you are saved. That if you confess with your mouth, you gotta humble yourself before God. You have got to understand that you are not God, that Father God created all of this and that you are just a part. God loves you and he wants you to be in his family forevermore, but you have to humble yourself and you have to accept what Jesus did on the cross for your life. And this is how you are saved. This is how you are declared righteous. And we're gonna get into the next episode because I just looked up and I saw how long I was going on. This is a big deal, and I wanna make sure that everybody is aware that's listening to the sound of my voice that Father God gave you free will. You can choose to do whatever you want with this life that God gave you. And what really makes Father God happy is when you thank him, when you tell Father God, "Man, I thank you for everything that you've done." in my life. God, I thank you for sending Jesus, your Son, to die for me. God, I thank you for my family. And you start thanking God from a sincere heart, and then you ask him, I need salvation, I need what your Son did for me on the cross. And when you do that, and when you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior from a humble position, you shall be saved. That is the whosoever. And John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. The world, whoever— those are the things I want you to take away from this episode. Is whoever could be you. If you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I want to encourage you. I woke up this morning with a heavy heart because somebody that's going to listen to this has not accepted Jesus. I can't imagine the thought of you not being in heaven with me, and you heard the sound of my voice. I want to give you every opportunity to get into the Word of God and let the Word of God get into you. Well, that's enough for now. God, I thank you so much for your Word. Jesus, thank you for coming and living a perfect life for this listener and for me and for my family and for their family. And Lord, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for the Holy Spirit for never leaving us nor forsaking us. And I pray that whatever is going on in this listener's life, I pray that you would just encourage, empower, and inspire them to get into your word. And Holy Spirit, lead them in all truth. Lord, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.