Chereads / A lukewarm Christian’s guide to not dying / Chapter 4 - If you have the capacity to do good then what’s stopping you!

Chapter 4 - If you have the capacity to do good then what’s stopping you!

If you have the capacity to do good then what's stopping you!

1. You weren't created to judge everyone else.

2. Love covers a multitude of sin.

3. Hating someone only hurts you the most.

4. Stop talking and listen to other people.

5. Don't be a good Christian for ten minutes everyday(when you're praying.)

6. If you say you're trying, then try harder.

7. Stop being so lazy.

8. You can't expect forgiveness if you can't forgive.

9. Kindness isn't always easy.

10. Sacrifice is inevitable.

11. Work to please God not people.

12. You only allow yourself to be tempted when you want to do something.

13. You have to stop desiring to sin.

14. God doesn't want you to act like other Christians,God wants you to act as Jesus did.

15. Don't take advantage of God's grace.

Here's a few rules I try to go by to help me in my struggle with sin and I hope they help you too.

Okayyy, let's start by remembering that without faith we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We aren't good people, that's already been established, we're all stained by sin. Don't get me wrong, we should still do good because our actions should glorify God and we should show people what difference Jesus can make in all our lives but we aren't good people because we do good things, only God is good and only God is holy, all we can do is try to emulate this. Jesus didn't come on this earth to comfort us, He came to be honest with us and on multiple occasions it's mentioned that without faith in Jesus as our Lord and savior, without believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that Jesus died to endure God's wrath on our behalf then we're not going to heaven.

Jesus loves you enough to tell you the truth, it's up to you to accept the truth. Now, I'm not saying it's easy to accept the truth, it's hard and scary to change almost all your opinions and your entire lifestyle but it's worth it. There's a reason it's called the hard truth, and honestly speaking, your opinion doesn't matter, God is the same today, tomorrow and forever and so His word remains unchanged whether you twist scripture to fit your opinions or just blatantly ignore major parts of the Bible. We need to put God's word as the dictator of our lives and whether we like it or not, we have to submit to it. Don't deceive yourselves or make yourselves fools, leave the scripture as it is, by cherry picking, we're creating a different God, don't interpret it to fit to your opinions to make you feel better. Accept conviction because it will help you change don't hide from conviction because you feel guilty, you need to feel guilt to push you to change yourself and live according to God and not yourself.

Now that we're done with the fact that good works alone cannot get us into heaven let's focus on why we should still do good works. Jesus is the light of this world and as Christians we should strive to reflect that light through our actions and this means doing good and helping people and in most cases, the best way to help people is by sharing the gospel, this is something I struggle with personally because of my social anxiety so I decided to use the small platform I have on Wattpad to hopefully change someone's life for the better. I pray that this does help anyone struggling with their faith and maybe even educate people because I was Christian but I was so ignorant because I chose not to read the Bible, I chose to pray only when I was in need and I honestly did not have a relationship with Jesus and I didn't even realize these things until I stumbled on a few videos that really made take a long and hard look at my former life and because of these selfless and loving people who made these videos, they made me realize I wasn't a real Christian and I'll forever be grateful for these people but all the glory goes to God because it was his will for me to find them and now I'm trying to find my identity in Christ which entails sacrificing a lot of things and of course, it's hard and I'm definitely struggling with a lot of it but i'm trying to ask for God's help and I honestly feel less attached to those desires. In one of these videos I've found, I found out that the statement "God helps those who help themselves." is actually false and nowhere in the Bible, I mean, if you actually take a long hard look at all these people in the Bible, none of them did any good without God's help, God wants to help us, He wants us to rely on him and have a relationship with him, God wants us to surrender all our struggles to Him because we can't do much without without God's help.

The good things we do, shouldn't be done for attention or so we can be called good by men, don't do good things to make yourself feel good, do good things to make other people feel good, do good things to make other people believe that God is real and He wants to have a relationship with every single one of us. So in conclusion if you're doing good things to be praised by man and not God then you're not doing good things, you're simply just putting on a show. Show people God's love through your actions, Jesus calls us to love each other just as He loves all of us. As hard as it is to believe, yes you should love a murderer or a rapist because we're all equal in the fact that we're all sinners so love everyone because it doesn't hurt to love people despite their short comings, yes it's hard, I'm not going to deny that but once again it's worthwhile. It's even harder to love the people who have hurt us but what do we gain from hate, absolutely nothing! So why hold on to hatred when we can be set free by love. We've all been through pain and some people have it worse but God can erase your pain only if you're willing to let go of that pain.

There's many reasons why we shouldn't judge people but in my opinion one of the most important things I've learned is that it's way harder to love people if we're constantly judging them, yes they sin, we all do! So why do we think we're better than those people when we really aren't. The Bible says if you judge others, you will be judged in the same way by God. One of the most helpful statements I've ever encountered in relation to loving people even when it's hard is to choose not to be offended, it didn't really make a lot of sense to me at first but when I started applying it to my life, I realized that people have different opinions from mine and they're are reasons why they have these opinions and the only reason I'm offended is because their opinions are different from mine, I'm offended because someone doesn't think like I do so I get into meaningless arguments with people over my religion or my choices because I think I'm right just as people with opinions that differ from mine think they're right. In an argument, every single person involved is going to think they're right and all you can really do is try to educate them as lovingly as you possibly can. I used to get into arguments not to glorify God or to educate people, I got into arguments to be right and that was wrong so as Christians let's not get into arguments, let's have conversations with people and let's try to change their minds, be loving and kind, share your opinion only if you truly know that it's correct according to God. We should educate people and try to see where they're coming from and why exactly they think the way they think. Don't be rude, it sucks, be nice, it's cool ;).

There's no such thing as having faith in Jesus and living the way Jesus wants us to if we do bad because if you accept Jesus in your heart he changes us for the better and not the worse so yes we cannot get into heaven by good works alone but we cannot claim to be saved if we don't do good and reflect Jesus' light in other people's lives. It's easy to be kind, so be kind.

Just a friendly reminder; your life is more fulfilling with Jesus in it. And if you're having trouble understanding the Holy trinity, I'm just as confused as you but to put it simply, Jesus is God in the flesh, the Holy Spirit is God in the spirit and God is the father and our creator, hope that helps.

𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛'𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚎

𝙲𝚑𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚜𝚊𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚏𝚎. 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙶𝚘𝚍 𝚒𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚑 𝚒𝚝. 𝙸 𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝚊𝚗d 𝚒'𝚖 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔!

𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞!!<33333

xoxo

M✨

Did you know????

-Reading the Bible is actually important, i definitely recommend. You won't regret it.

-Progressive christianity isn't the same as Christianity because most of their teachings contradict the Bible which is literally God's word. The Bible isn't meant to comfort you so if you twist scripture to comfort yourself then it's not God's word anymore, it's just people's opinions.

Question; If God is loving then why would He send us to hell?

Answer; Because God doesn't send you to hell. On earth God gives us a choice...follow Jesus and get eternal life, follow this world and suffer the consequences. We make our own decisions, that's the literal point of free will and our choice defines where we end up. Every choice we make has consequences, we choose to go to hell by putting this world before God, Jesus died to save us but Jesus won't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. God doesn't force us to do anything because He respects our free will, He doesn't desire to force people to follow Him. He wants a relationship with us and if you don't want that He'll give you exactly that, in hell. So make the right choice, God gives us the chance to choose where we want to spend eternity so don't blame Him when you choose wrong!!