No Credit for Us to Take

No Credit for Us to Take

by David Brenneman

All religions DO lead somewhere, but it's NOT to Heaven. Every single man-made religion in this world leads only to the gates of Hell.

The only path to righteousness is found in a life given to Christ. The only way, the way to living, to a well-lived life, is found in Christ Jesus. It's not found on the stock market, not found in degree's or education achieved. It's not found in intelligence aquired over time. Jesus told His Disciples this: "Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:13-14 NASB. Likewise go back to Chapter 18:2-4 NASB "And He called a child to Himself and set him among them, and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So whoever will humble himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Due to sin and it's awful consequences...we want to be on top. We want to be the one calling the shots. We want to be the one to tell God how it's going to be. Of how we are here to rule this world and He should get in line like everyone else. Those are the thoughts of the god of this world throughout the centuries.

Satan's branded all kinds of worldly religions to try to pave a way to deceive people into thinking they can get to heaven on their own merits.

There's absolutely nobody going through Heaven's gates that has not been saved in Christ Jesus. Some may point to children who have not had the opportunity to decide either to accept or reject salvation. The Bible points to an age of 'accountability' of when children know and truly understand right from wrong. Honestly due to maturity it does vary from child to child. As the Scriptures point to, God will by no means condemn a child that doesn't know it's right hand from it's left.

Adults, from the young adults to the aged all know on some level of what's right and what's wrong. The only exception being those who are not mentally developed to know right and wrong. To be intentionally non-specific...God knows who will or won't come to Christ, He knows who is able and who is not. We know this by it being Jesus, not any angels, who separates the saved from the unsaved in Revelation. Jesus spoke in the Gospels of being the Good Shepherd. Of how His sheep know His voice and follow Him. When you consider His telling of the Good Shepherd, it takes you to how a shepherd protects his or her sheep. Of how they lay their life on the line for the sheep to keep out the ravenous wolves and others that would go after their sheep. They would pen in an area for the sheep to stay in and the shepherd would be the 'gate' of them coming in or going out.  

There is only one place the religions of this world 'coexist' as that graphic that's been made popular from all the so-called religions of this world show.  

That's in Hell. Since Jesus is THE way, THE truth and THE life, then there IS NO OTHER. To be humbled before God as the Scriptures we read point to, it means to let go of self, and to go for what God's wanting of us and through us. It's to not overcomplicate the Scriptures when presenting them to others as the Pharisee's and Sadducee's would do. Which would put walls between them and God. In a sermon from this last Sunday the one preaching mentioned a quote he'd written in the front of his Bible of his then youth Pastor. "There are only two things that last forever: God and People. It's our job to bring the two together."

It's the job of born-again believers to live in such a way that people see God's hand in us. Not us. It's not about the world seeing and applauding our physical achievements or our intelligence. It's not about our diet or our exercise that people might see and want to know more about. Perfectly healthy, perfectly intelligent people die every single moment of the day. When we stand before Jesus, our resume will not be taken into account. Our time spent in the body as a believer that's in that accounting we will give has to do with what we did in our bodies for Christ.   

Jesus has proven over all the centuries since before Adam and Eve...that no one comes to the Father but through Him.  

Good works have never gotten 1 person admission to the streets of Heaven.

There are no 'scales' of good and bad to be weighed that will ever be used by Jesus to decide if someone should or shouldn't get into His Heaven.

Proof of that is the Final Judgment in the book of Revelation. Everyone's 'good' and 'bad' will pass through the fire. Even after all that...even IF they lived an exemplary life...if their names were not found in the Book of Life, they were cast into the Lake of Fire. Eternal separation from God. The final deciding point is that book. That book is only populated by the names of those who have come to Christ for salvation.

You may have not yet come to Christ for salvation. You have have been living with a false 'hope' that maybe God will change His mind and spare you. It doesn't work that way. A false hope like that is just one of thousands of 'ways' that people try to get into Heaven without using the only door there is...Jesus.

False hopes and false ideas of how to get into Heaven abound and have for centuries.   

The thing is...you don't have to worry about being good enough...when you come to Christ, HE makes you good enough. He casts your sins as far as the east is from the west, remembering them no more. That's written in the Bible and Jesus said of His Word that NOBODY will ever change it to make even 1 part untrue.

We don't have to be trying to make ourselves good enough before coming. We don't have to be concerned about what He MIGHT have us do after we do. That's just part of trusting Him with our life after we come to Him. When we are cleansed, when we are washed of our sins, we want to do what we can for the One who did it for us. Look at Isaiah 6. After his sins were removed, Isaiah didn't care, the weight was lifted from his heart and his mind. Out of gratitude he just wanted to be of use to the Lord Jesus for what He had done for him.

When you come to Christ and do receive His free gift of salvation a weight you never knew you were under is lifted. You had just gotten used to it all your life so you didn't know it was really there. Really real. 

But I like who I am! Guess what...the Spirit of God tends to take even what we think is the best parts of us...and quite often makes them even better. We just need to be willing to trust Him with the results and the method to get them.  

We know not what all we are capable of until we trust God for what's to come and become of us. We only know our limitations and are often finding them to be chains that bind us and are not a tool to help us. I am also a firm believer that not everyone is meant to be a leader. As a follower of Christ...Christ leads. I care not for what the status and all the fluff of what this world ascribes to elevated learning or of worldly success. Success in the eyes of God has to do with what we did in the body for Jesus. What did we do to show people Jesus. As one sermon title I remember said: Daring to be an Andrew. Andrew, one of the Disciples was well known for bringing people to Jesus. He brought Peter to Jesus. Jesus did all the rest with every single person Andrew brought.

"But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” as it says in Romans 10.