Recently I was having a conversation with a customer in my office. That alone isn’t that unusual, since I have a conversation with most of the people that come into my office. As the conversation progressed though, he began boldly proclaiming that we don’t really know with certainty if there is a heaven or a hell or if God even exists at all. Ironically, it wasn’t the question of God’s existence that seemed to be bothering him as much the questions about what happens to us after we die. He was bothered by the obvious fact that after we die it’s too late to change our mind about God. He intuitively understood that the conclusions he reaches, while here on earth, about, “who God is” will have a large bearing on his eternal destiny.
I think every person wrestles with the, “God Question”. The question takes numerous forms: Who is He? Is He aware of what is going on in my life? Is He all powerful? Did He really create everything? Does He have a standard of right and wrong? If He does, what is that standard? And how does He treat people who violate that standard?
The answers to the God questions don’t lie in a set of rules, a system of religion, or a popular vote. Man is not equipped with the ability to find the answers by himself. You can go on “spiritual quests”, visit all the religious sites, even read the Bible and still not have the answers to the God questions. The answers are not found in us. They’re discovered in a relationship with Him.
Unless you are a friend of God’s, you don’t really know what He’s like. Unless you regularly communicate with Him and hear His Word, you don’t know what He likes. You can’t accurately know anything about Him if you don’t know Him. The problem is that there is a huge separation between us and Him. It’s called sin. He is absolutely holy and will not have a relationship with sin. The whole point of Jesus coming as a baby in the flesh was to restore people to the God that created them and answer the God question for them. He paid the price for our sins by dying and experiencing the penalty for sins that he wasn’t guilty of.
So the answer to the God question will only be found in a relationship with Him. In order to be in a relationship with Him we must place our faith in Jesus Christ. First we choose to believe that He is the only way to be restored to our Creator. Then we act on that belief and confess our sins and sinfulness. We allow Him to be Lord of our lives and have complete control. He responds by cleaning the inner-most part of us and filling it with His presence in the form of the Holy Spirit.
If you’re reading this and you’ve never made that choice; you don’t have any answers and you’re not prepared to meet God after you die. If you’re reading this and you are already a believer, you may have found your thoughts drifting off because what I just said is so familiar that we don’t even stop and think about it anymore. But if you look around you, at a world without answers, what are you offering them? Do they need to stop sinning? Do they need to start coming to church? Should they start being more considerate of others? Should they change their minds about right and wrong?
The world needs to know God and experience a relationship with Him. Jesus said that there will be people who will stand before Him on the Day of Judgment, and point to the good things that they did in His name. He won’t turn them away because the stuff they did wasn’t good enough. He will turn them away because He doesn’t know them. Don’t try to answer the God Question without a relationship.
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