Do You Feel Like You're Missing Something In Life? Who's In Charge?

All right, this is all for those of y' all who feel like you're missing something in life. There's just something more out there and you feel like you haven't found it yet. Let me show you an option that millions of people have selected for themselves that maybe you've not taken a look at. And that is, let's compare. You're going through life. This is you, you're born and you know, somewhere down the road, oh, guess what? No, you're not going to keep on going. You're going to die. And this is Earth. This is temporary. Temporary in the sense that we all know we're not going to live forever. There is another option. That's the option up here of the eternal. That didn't really start there when you started. No, it's always been there. This is where God lives. This is eternity. This is perfection. We're down here at imperfection. Now if everything's going great in your life, you feel everything's fine. God bless you. I don't have anything to say to you, but here's a viewpoint which actually is what I believe be the truth about life, is that life works like this. We're born as we set out in life. We find out we have this thing that keeps bringing us down called a sin nature. Now you, as soon as you say that people, they go into rebellion. No, I don't have a sin nature. Why did you say I have a sin nature? Well, right there, the fact that you're in rebellion about it tells it's alive and well. The way the sin nature works is that it only flares up when you tell it not to do something because it's a rebellious streak and you can't rebel against nothing. But as we go through life, there's a lot of got to do this, got to do that, deadlines, rules, living in the world. And all day long we see our sin nature flare up and that creates a lot of problems for us in the sense that we want to do well. We get in the self improvement programs, you know, we lose weight, we do better, we get disciplined, we watch our language. You know, we treat people better, we budget our money. But then we get sidetracked and life is, we try and improve ourselves. All religions are designed to gear, you know, to deal with this problem. All religions, see what the Bible says is the sum of all your efforts will never amount to anything. It says your righteousness is as dirty rags. It's useless you trying to clean yourself up. And what it is, it's the Ribbon on a pig principle. You can take. See all of these things that the Boy Scout pledge. I pledge to do this, pledge to do that. I promise to love, honor and obey. And all of these things, we pledge, all of these are geared to get ourselves. Make ourselves be at our best behavior and on a spiritual side, to make ourselves acceptable to God. We can improve. We're going to chant like the Eastern religions. We're going to go, mmm, we're going to clarify our head. We're going to give all our money to the poor. We're going to devote ourselves. We're going to. You know, all of these things, all of this stuff is based off you doing to making yourself acceptable. In other words, you somehow. It's got this flawed idea that you can make yourself acceptable to God. And people go through their entire life trying to make themselves acceptable. And. And every religion in the world is based off this. Every. And people go from one to another to another to clean themselves up. And all it amounts to is taking a pig out of a mud hole, cleaning them up, scrubbing them up, giving the pig a manicure, cleaning their teeth, putting a ribbon around them, spraying them with perfume and making that pig look great. But what's going to happen to a pig that you do that to? You turn it loose. What's it going to do? It's going to run just as fast as it can. Perfume and pink ribbon go, plop right back in. See, this is you trying to clean yourself up. But eventually your nature gets to you. And that's the same thing with the pig. The trouble is, all of that's external. See, we're dealing with the external here, trying to clean it up. That's temporary. Outside, in other words. But the problem is inside. And our nature brings us back down, just like the pig. The pig can't help it. Pig's not being bad. The pig is being what a pig is. That's its nature to run out there and find the mud, and it's going to be just as happy as it can be. It's not happy with the perfume in the bath and the ribbon. It's happy in the mud because it's where its nature wants it to be. And see, what God does is not focus on the eternal. Christianity is totally different than everything out there. Christianity is the only thing. That's why it's not a religion. Religion is man trying to clean himself up. What Christianity is God offering an alternative. Send his son to be our substitute, since he knows it's a lost cause. We'll never Be able to do it for ourselves. We'll never be able to do this because of our nature. But his son came to create an option and to be the substitute for us for the penalty for our sins, which is death or eternal separation. See, God is going to be that. God is there and is always going to be there. But we're separated now. We got this barrier between us and God. We're not going to get there. All the religions and the failure of the religions of the world prove we're not going to get there on our own. Want me to prove that to you another way? Every religion in the world will say, this is what you've got to do to get to heaven. And as soon as people learn where that is, what are they trying to do? Immediately start. Well, you don't have to do exactly. They start with the exceptions. That's because it's in nature. If they're not going to be an outright rebellion, they're going to try and cut corners. It's like the Muslims praying five times a day. If they believe that, that's wonderful. If you believe that's wonderful, great. But there's a thing. You pray on your knees five times a day. And if you go into the Muslim countries, they don't stop the country five times a day. They have their workarounds. Well, there's workarounds and everything. I'm not condemning them. There's worker. Because that's just human nature. Religions do not work. Now, if they work for you, turn this off. Go do something else. Don't pick an argument with me. I'm not interested in arguing. My mind is made up. I know what I know. I'm offering what I do know to the people who are looking to make up their mind about this thing. They're not satisfied with their answer about who's the right person running their life. See, people down here want to stay in charge of their life. I'll fix it. I'll do it. Let me clean myself up. I'm going to run my life. But the people up here say, lord, I'm a failure. I need a new nature. And what they do is somehow at some point between being born and becoming aware and responsible for themselves, where they can think and they can understand things growing up and before they die, somewhere in here, they come to a light bulb moment where they say, and it could be the last day. You're the last minute of your life. It could be very early. With me, I was eight years old. Could be anywhere in there, but somewhere where you Say Lord, this is not, I recognize a lost cause. I'm never going to be good enough. I'm calling on you, I'm throwing it on you and what happens? I'm asking you to come in and save me and to give me a new nature. And at that moment instantly you are transported and your nature is transported from earthly to eternal. You get a new nature. You are born spiritually just like when you're born physically. Now this is your moment that you are born. You are born but now you have a spirit. You'll never die. Why? Because you've been born into eternity. Now here it's not a matter of trying to improve yourself and do the do gooders and the the boy Scout pledge. It's a matter of you will grow and you will mature. You know, you start with a little thing there, but you're going to grow. You're going to mature as you move through time because you're going to be more, learn more about your relationship. You're going to get experience about living in your relationship with God, getting to know him, him, getting to reveal himself to you. You learn more about the scriptures of the facts and assurance of where you are. You mature. But you don't have to prove yourself anymore because God has taken over that from you. And there's a great ex I'll show you how to get to later about exchanging the decision making person in your life. And folks, this is what happens. This is what makes Christianity different. The sum of your efforts with you trying to do it, go through life with different program. Okay, I'm going to try something different this time. No matter what you try, no matter how far you get, you're going to come back crashing back down to earth. And the sum of your efforts will always be zero in changing yourself because there's nothing you can do. You may change your habits, you may change your friend, you may change your pattern, but you can't change your nature. And your nature, which is your rebellious streak is what creates all the problems. It's not your fault that you have that nature. You were born with it, we're all born with it. But it is your fault if you refuse God's provision to solve that problem, that fallen nature and to give you a new nature. So it's not your fault that you were born with it. But it is your fault if you return your back on God's free gift and offer of a new life. Now if you want to follow up on this, the best, one of the best I've ever seen is At a link we're going to put on here, this link and it's go through the four spiritual laws from Campus Crusade for Christ. Millions of people have found their way to Christ through these things. In Law 1, it's God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Two, man is sinful, sinful and separated. Three, and they've got some great illustrations on that. The third thing is that Jesus Christ is the only provision. John 14:6. That's the only. I am the way, the truth and the life. That's the only way. God's only provision. Look at this. If God provided one way, why would he provide two? What is this? A shopping sale? A buffet? I'm going to give you a buffet so you'll find one you like. No folks, we're the one who needs help. If you're drowning in the ocean and a boat comes up and they throw you a life raft with a rope attached to it and all you got to do is grab onto that and they can pull you in, what do you say? Do you have a different colored rope? No, that's not the proper response from someone drowning in the ocean with sharks getting ready to chew them up. The response is thank you, yes, I accept. I'm gonna hang on for dear life. And so that's why Jesus Christ is the only. That's not why. But Jesus Christ is the only and he's good enough. You don't need another one. Why would he waste time on another? Keep it simple. Plus a tremendous price. He gave his life, came down from heaven, gave his life to be the substitute for us. You're gonna turn your back on that. I hope you're happy with your other choice. You're gonna stay in charge of running your life. Best of wishes for you on that one. And the last thing is there are no grandchildren in heaven. You must accept, you have free will. You've been made in God's image in the fact that you have free will. And you must accept for you. You don't get there because your parents, your grandparents, everybody else, you've got to accept for you. Now here's the link on where you can find all of these, the scriptures that go and back this up, those diagrams that I referred to about the change in a very simple, beautiful little diagr but the self directed life being out of order and how everything comes into order when you put Christ in charge of your life and they've got a prayer there that you can pray. If you say this is my moment in time where I'm ready to make my decision. And so everything is right there at that link. If you're at the point where you're ready to get serious, get this issue behind you, go follow up, go through the four spiritual laws and invite Christ into your life.