Saturday, November 8, 2008

From Nadine to Jeff

WOW, Jeff!!! That was HEAVY!!!! I am SOOOO VERY sad to read your logic about God, Heaven, Christ, the resurrection, and NO hope of a wonderful life for eternity!!! I read what you say, and it is so far from my beliefs, that I can't even express it...........I don't know ALL that history that you have given me; I never went to college, but fell in love and got married a month before my 19th birthday!!! (Did get a license as a cosmetologist, which doesn't qualify me for great discussions like this, but..... I do know some of it, just because Rich and I both enjoy documentaries, and history programs, and reading. But I have studied the Bible all my life, and certainly you have also, but I was brought up as a Protestant, and so right there, we started off on completely different "planets" LOL!! I have of course read the difference it made when Martin Luther found and moved great throngs of people with his "the Just shall live by Faith," in that we don't "work our way to Heaven" as Catholics are taught to believe (now don't blow your stack here.I'm just trying to break it down to basics......I worked with every church in the book in my last job, so know what Catholics thru many Protestant religions all the way to Unitarians; I was the regional mkt. director for Olan Mills, in the Church Directory division/ my territory was 1/2 of Iowa............also had a Catholic friend along the way, and a sister-in-law now and we have talked a LOT.but, anyway........I am intrigued by what education does, and I'm sorry, but it isn't all good, in my opinion."..simple childlike faith is all Jesus asked for in Mark 10:15: Whoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." That is so plainly worded, so simple: I invited Jesus into my heart as a young girl, and the fact that I DID that...you can't SEE IT until you take that leap of faith; THEN you can see what it's all about, and why it makes sense; THEN your faith will see it in a completely different light and you can have the peace and the awesome anticipation of knowing you are going to live in Heaven for eternity, and only because of Jesus's death, burial and resurrection ; He, in the 3 days when His body lay in the tomb, went to Hell, and took back from satan, the Keys to Hell, Death, and the Grave............and all we have to do then to receive the free gift that He offers us is to ASK Him to be our Lord and Saviour.......when you do that, THEN and ONLY THEN, will your eyes open up to the Truth, and the Truth Will Set You Free!!! Without that, Jeff, all you have to look forward to is being put in a casket, thrown into the ground, and left to rot..........BUT, that would be the easy part, because if you have NOT received the free gift of salvation, you WILL believe THEN in Hell, when you get there, (GOD FORBID!!) because that is where we ALL would go if it weren't for Jesus' sacrifice, and if it weren't for us accepting it. NOW, THAT is my uneducated view, without all of the concern about the complicated history you wrote to me about. And I have such PEACE in that, such HOPE of seeing my daughter again, my father, my brother, my nephew, and friends, etc.........I can hardly WAIT some days, when this world is so crummy; when bad things happen to people that have never done anything seriously wrong: that was what we THOUGHT we were when our daughter was killed just when her life "began" .....but the Holy Spirit DID stick with me thru all of the crap I did in response to her death!!! And thru all of that, through all of the drinking and driving, and hair-raising, near-miss accidents, and even worse stuff than that.....still my Heavenly Father stuck with me; still He didn't give up on me, because I was HIS....He doesn't throw away those who are His children..(YEAH!!).......He went through all of that with me and still took me back in Love and Mercy and Grace!!! And best of all: FORGAVE ME!!! And THAT is MY belief; that is what gets ME through each day, is that anticipation of what is ahead/ whether John McCain or Barack Obama had won this election, GOD is still on the Throne, and He is still there with open arms to keep us...no matter what is to come. The night Obama won, I was scared; I was very humanly scared; now I've had some time to absorb it, and I just see it all as more evidence of the prophesies in the Bible of what is to come in the "last days," and I see it as that...just one step closer to Jesus' getting His church out of here before it turns REALLY ugly on this planet. I hope you would do what I did 50 yrs. ago, and accept Christ ---BY FAITH, as a child would do, and see if you don't find unfathomable Peace in your heart.....NOT saying it in jest, but crying out to the God of the Universe to accept you into His family....you say you see nothing that would make you believe; Jeff, you SEE the result of wind, but you don't SEE the wind...that is how it is with faith....you take it, BY FAITH, that God created this world and people, because He wanted a family....Adam and Eve messed up and brought sin, sickness, evil into this world because they chose with a free will that God gave them, (and US), to let satan tell them what to do. That gave us all of the junk in the world that is here....because our world is broken and fallen.........but ONE DAY...it will all be restored as God made it, to perfection, where "the lion will lay down with the lamb," and the swords will be beaten into plowshares, spears into pruninghooks....nation will not lift up swords against other nations...and they will no longer learn war...Isaiah 2:4.....Jeff, I know you know that and many other scriptures, but the difference is in I BELIEVE those words, and that Hope with all of my heart!! I just want you to know that peace and have that Hope for the future also, whether you experience it NOW or in the future...none of us know how long our life will be. But I KNOW that I KNOW, that I KNOW, that it is true, and that I have so much to look forward to in the next life. It is a WONDERFUL, awesome, and indescribably PEACEFUL feeling to REST in those promises and in that Truth!!!!
I just want that for you as well.......SO MUCH!! I want it for your wife and young sons, to find that, to be led by that in your life, to rest in that hope!!! God Bless!!! Nadine...

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