What God requires of me
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Introduction: I was asked to supply
biblical answers to the question asked on the title page:
What does God require of me?
The perspective of this bible
study is this: It is for a sincerely curious person, one
who is not generally knowledgeable with the whole biblical
message from God, a person who does not daily know the
depths of God's love for her or him, nor the boundless joy
of knowing the God described in the bible.
Some biblical basics will be covered, along with answers to the question posed.
The approach used here is to describe in narrative
what God requires of me (and to demonstrate in the
download above the biblical texts which state
these requirements); so the format of this bible study is
like a conversation between protagonists, and it is not
punctuated by biblical texts within the main body of the
study.
Not all questions can be answered in this bible
study, such as is: Do Angels exist? etc. Only the basics
about God, people and what does God require of me? can be
answered in this particular bible study; this study is not
about religion, it is not about making a persuasive case
for the student to select and attend a particular place or
style of religion or church.
Of necessity the study makes
the basic assumption that the student either does or
eventually will trust the truthfulness of the bible as a
reliable source of information about God; if the student
wishes to investigate the truthfulness and veracity of the
bible, the author of this study can separately provide
information on those questions.
Answer: What God requires of me, regarding God:
That I have knowledge of and respect for the true living eternal
God, who has personhood with infinite intelligence,
memory, power, perfection, beauty, and love.
God requires
that I love God. That I worship (place first in my life)
no other thing, person, or deity. That I obey God. That I
communicate with God by prayer. That I hate evil, and that
I strive for good. That I am honest. That I have a sincere
desire to please God.
That I find happiness in God, and
what God is bringing about in my life. That I am content
with what God supplies me. That I remain hopeful and
trusting in God.
That I do not undertake selfish bad
activities, justifying myself in them due to feelings that
God has abandoned me nor with feelings that God brings me
disaster.
That I not glorify myself.
That I not depend
upon my own plans to advance my own wealth. That I
understand that this life is a temporary one, and that
there is an eternal life.
Answer: What God requires of me, regarding people:
That I
have true awareness of, deep respect for, and generosity
towards other people. That I love others. That I am not
selfish towards others. That I honor others . That I do
not hurt others.
That I am honest. That I am faithful to
what I promise.
That I hate what is wrong. That I not want
and do not take someone else's property nor reputation.
That I do not manipulate people to bring benefits to
myself.
That I am willing to help others know about God,
God's kindness, love, presence and care.
Answer: What God requires of me, regarding myself:
But I am not able, on my own, to implement what God
requires of me - I cannot because of my continual
selfishness and desire towards what is corrupt, in God's
eyes, and in my own eyes.
God is totally pure and loving,
and my selfishness blocks God's ability to deal with me as
I am, on my own, as a dirty rebellious orphan, in God's
eyes, and in my own eyes - because God looks within my
heart and my soul, and God sees that my motives are always
selfish, and God finds corruption everywhere in my heart,
my soul and my life.
God must perform a wondrous divine
refurbishing work in me so that I can implement what God
requires of me.
On my own, I am totally lost towards God,
infinitely distant from God, due to my complete corruption
and selfishness, in God's eyes, and in my own eyes.
And on my own, I am destined to be apart from God forever,
I will never on own be able to please God as I am.
God's
requirement that I love God is not met when I distance
myself from God.
Even if in the past I made a one-time
saving prayer to God, but thereafter lead a life distant
from God, God's renewing life has not touched me where God
wants it to touch me: in my heart, in my soul, in my life.
I cannot say that God has saved me when I seek to distance
myself from God, when I seek to ignore God.
Married couples do not say they are married when they live apart -
no, they are not married as long as they live apart from
their spouse.
In the same way, those who love God are near
to God, they are God's children, they live in God's
presence, and they are saved by God. Those who are apart
from God do not live with God, and they are not God's
children - their lives testify that they are not God's
children.
I need strong divine help to implement what God requires
of me - God must work this divine change in me - I cannot
bring this change about, myself - I am totally unable to
reach up to God - God must reach down to me, to save me
from my selfishness, my corruption, my lost-ness.
God must provide a means so I can implement what God requires of
me. Otherwise, on my own, I am totally unchanged, totally
lost, totally corrupt and selfish, in God's eyes, and in
my own eyes.
And I agree that I seek nothing but pleasure
and self-gain for myself, to the detriment and loss of
others, in my natural unchanged condition - God's vision
of me is correct and accurate: I am a selfish corrupt
non-loving person, far from God, and far from people.
But someone has told me that practicing a particular
religion saves me in God's eyes - isn't that true?
Really? I have found that whatever religious practices I
follow to reach up to God does not change my internal
condition towards God - I know that no matter what kind of
religious room I sit in, no matter what kind of religious
words I say, and no matter what kind of religious
practices I perform, I know they are not efficacious
towards God's requirements on me, as long as my internal
corrupt self remains untouched and unchanged towards God
and towards people.
I can see in myself after going to a
religious ritual that my unloving heart and soul are
unchanged, and that I remain hurtful to people. No, I can
see that my religious practices bring me no peace with
God, not in God's eyes, nor in my own.
But someone has shown me that I don't need to do anything
more or differently towards God.
I want to live life according to my own plan - it seems to me that God does
not exist nor does any god impact my life in the least way - it
seems to me that I am left to my own devices in a world
where everyone does what they want, to gain for themselves
what no god is granting them - it seems to me that life is
to be enjoyed and lived for the pleasures that the world
provides.
I have considered this world and found that it
is full of fruits and pleasures to be eaten and enjoyed.
And I ask this: If there is a god, does this god not want
me to enjoy this world of pleasures which has been given
to me?
I ask you: am I not made for pleasure?
Is it not my right to please myself?
Is it not true that if there is a god, that such a god has made me this way?
Does this God not want me to consume the fruits this god has given me?
Am I not doing what this god would have me do, which is to
please myself with those things given to me?
Would it not be denying god if I went against pleasing myself with the
gifts you say god has given me, to serve what seems to me
to be stringent unloving rules you say I should follow?
How can you tell me God wants me to deny myself? How does
God know what this life is all about, if there is a god?
Isn't God far away in heaven? Why is God concerned about
me, my puny little ways in this puny little life? I really
don't believe that God cares one little thing about me at
all - because if God did care about me, God would make
this a better world for me, a world without sickness,
without wrongs, without destruction. I think you are wrong
about the bible - isn't it a religious storybook of myths
written by man to justify religious practices? Didn't we
evolve from lower forms, apes from even lesser forms, and
what does God have to do with me, since I was formed from
lower animals over millions of years? I ask you: what is
so overwhelmingly important about God, anyway?
Why do I even need God?
You do not know the good, loving, kind, creating, personal
God of the universe described in the bible! if you believe God is too distant for
you to find, and too uncaring to help you in this life.
The bible teaches that God truly exists, and can be seen
in the wonderful, complex systems that surround me - the
starry hosts, the galaxies, the mechanisms of the
universe, life itself.
Isaac Newton - the father of
calculus and the mathematical formulas that describe the
orbits of stars and planets - learned that the stars,
planets and their orbits are so carefully positioned in
the heavens that only the Almighty God could have possibly
placed them there in the first place; that is to say, no
physical natural forces could have 'moved them there',
since they are so delicately and precisely balanced one
with the other, all of them as a group depending on all of
them as a group to keep them all in their respective
places.
Newton discovered that all of the stars and
planets 'are in gravitational tension' one with another,
such that if one became out of balance with the other, the
universe would not work as we know it - it wouldn't exist.
Newton's discoveries prove that the universe didn't 'just
pop up one day in the past by its own impersonal physical
forces'; in fact, without God holding these together, the
universe would 'stop on a dime' and would not exist. Just
like that.
God does exist! We can know this with certainty!
God does not leave me without testimony and proof for
God's existence - God wants me to know that God exists.
God has formed and made everything personally, not by
empty unemotional mechanical processes!
Objective scientific research has determined that out of dead
unliving matter, no living thing is made and formed on its
own - micro evolution (e.g. specie adaptation and
adjustment) refines existing living animals, and this is proven - macro evolution (e.g. specie
creation and self-biogenesis from dead unliving matter)
does not exist, has never been observed, and has no viable
adequate scientific explanation for its full workings
(e.g. how truly dead unliving matter brings forth
conscious living life in animals and humans - how
non-complex non-information repositories [lower forms]
bring forth greater organization and greater information
repositories [higher forms] - indeed, scientific laws that
all agree with have satisfactorily proved that gradual
macro evolution at lower levels of energy and information
[lower forms] cannot bring forth the creation
and forming of higher levels of energy and information
[higher forms]).
God is a personal God who has personally formed me, and
personally cares for me - God provides the things I need
in this life - all sorts of things: strength, mental
abilities, food, employment, friends, government, law,
everything I need!
God has promised that eventually there will be a new
world, one without sickness, without wrongs, without
destruction - in the mean time, God cares for me and helps
me personally in this life by way of a daily relationship
with God.
God has a personal desire to join with me on a
daily basis.
God has made me for God's own pleasure, and
not for my own personal self pleasure - indeed, without
God in my life, there is no true pleasure that fulfills me
- without God, I am lost and storm-tossed in an empty and
meaningless world.
Only in God can I find my life's fulfillment.
The bible is a truthful trustworthy book given to me by
God. It's historical accuracy is without challenge, being
proven again and again by modern researchers to be
absolutely accurate and truthful. The certainty of its
information meets the highest legal tests for veracity and
truthfulness.
I can trust the bible as revealed truth from
God, revealed truth about God and mankind.
God is not placing requirements on me to stifle me, but to
bless me!
God's requirements on me are easily met, they
are not burdensome, as long as I trust God to help me
implement them, and as long as I daily relate to God -
having done that, God's requirements on me fill me with
happiness in loving God and loving people, as I answer
God's requirements on me with godly actions in my life.
A simple example verifies this: God tells me it is more
blessed to give than to receive - and this is proven to be
so, as I give to others, I am blessed more than I expect as I give to others.
Every other requirement God has for me is
similarly met with the joyous bounty of true knowledge
that God loves me, and that I am God's child.
We are now at a cross-road in our bible study: from here
on, we either choose to listen to God and honor God, or we
choose to ignore God, and dishonor God.
God is plural, existing as Father-Son-Holy Spirit in one God-head - three
in one, and one in three (e.g. one in substance and being,
displayed in a tri-unity of interwoven, non-separable
substance expressed as three persons in one divine
eternally self-existent God) - so tightly woven together
that indeed we can say with certainty there is no division
and no cross-purpose within this one-in-three single
God-head.
God is all powerful, all knowledgeable, all
capable, all present everywhere at all points and places
in the universe - but God is also outside and beyond the
universe - God is over all, creates all, and governs all.
God is so present and so capable that God can move the
entire universe around and everything in it just as easily
as a human can move a spoon around on a kitchen table.
All that there is, and all that there ever will be is under
God's power, plan, and purpose - nothing ever happens
without God's knowledge.
God the Son, the savior of the
world, always was and always will be, but on a specific
date in time, entered our physical world as a human, being
both God and man thereafter, grew into a manhood
conventionally, taught from the bible that people must
repent of - must turn away from - their evil selfish
corrupt ways, and God the Son willingly went to the cross
to die and pay a ransom - (The price or payment demanded
or needed to be paid for a person's release from prison;
it is a redemption from sin and its consequences.) - as a
propitiation-payment to God the Father for the evil
selfish ways and sins of all mankind everywhere in all
times - (A propitiation is a reconciliation to the
offended party, an appeasement to the one who is hurt.) -
so God was deeply offended and hurt by the selfishness and
corruption of people towards God and towards people.
God the Son paid the price once-for-all-evermore by his death
to cover all of my sin debt to God the Father - God is so
gracious and kind to me that God paid my personal debt by
an ugly painful death upon the cross by shedding his blood
for my sins against God so that I might become God's
child.
Understanding that this is an undecipherable
mystery beyond my human power of thinking and
comprehending, nevertheless I know from the bible that God
has done all the work to buy me back from the penalty of
sin, which is death.
Physical death still reigns in this world, but God has
broken the power of death, and will grant me
life-after-death, eternal life, if I love God.
And this is eternal life: that I believe that God the Son, Jesus, died
for me personally and covered my personal sin before God
the Father, and that God the Son rose from the grave and
was bodily resurrected, and He is the true and only Son of
God (e.g. God the Son) - the Messiah, the promised one,
the one spoken of and described throughout the bible as
the savior of the world.
And this is the evidence that I
have eternal life: that I continue to know and continue to
obey God the Son on a daily basis, who has commanded me to
know and love God, and to love people, and to know and
implement the requirements God has placed on me (e.g.
those spoken of in this bible study).
God promises in the
bible that someday death will be dead and have no power.
God similarly promises that if I honor God, God knows me
and watches over me, and that death no longer has power
over me.
I am therefore released from death, obtaining
eternal life now, and clinging to it forever more, even
upon my physical death from this life.
But if I refuse at all points to implement God's
requirements upon me, if I refuse to repent and refuse to
believe in God the Son as savior for my sins, then I have
used up all my options, and I cannot claim any status nor
standing before God, because I have raised myself above
God's merciful plan of forgiveness of my personal sins,
and have said to God: No thank you, I'll handle this life
and my death my self - I am really not interested in you
God and your plan for my life - and as Frank Sinatra said,
I did it my way.
In this case, if I persist in this, some
day I will physically die alone, and then face the eternal
God on my own, with no covering between this eternal God
and myself, and I will have to pay my own price for my own
sin, which is the second death, eternal death, apart and
away from God forever, eternally in pain and agony (e.g.
without God, all of life is an utter forever tormenting
existence).
In this case, I will have traded eternal
blessedness and happiness with God, and good and fine
gifts from God, for aloneness, emptiness, darkness,
away-ness, and pain, forever.
This is not a pretty
picture. But if I reject God, after God has formed me,
cared for me, aided me, helped me, sustained me all
through this life, what else can be done for me?
Nothing!
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"Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness."
Psalm 29:2
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