I read an article in the paper this week
that you could pay up to £3000 to meet the actors of the tv series, Sherlock
Holmes at the annual Sherlocked convention, you cannot even be sure the main characters
will be there but you won’t get your money back. Why anyone one would want to pay
that amount to meet a fictitious character I have to say is beyond me. I delved
a little deeper into this and there are a lot of stars who charge anything from
£350 for a quick hello and a photo to thousands for a dinner with them. I may
be a bit green but these are just ordinary men and women who are either in the
music business, or acting and I know they are probably very good at their job but let’s
face it, nobody would dream of paying £3000 to have dinner with a man or women whose job
it is to save lives whilst putting their own at risk!
These people who save up their hard earned
money to pay people who already have more than enough just doesn’t make sense. But
then neither does it make sense to me to pay someone for healing! The world is
full of people on the make and the church is no exception, you only have to
look at the faith and prosperity movement. People making money out of other
people’s misery. I don’t find that in the word of God, far from it. So how much
do you have to pay to meet God? How much do you have to pay to get into heaven?
One thing is for sure no matter how much money you give to the church or a
preacher that is not going to get you there. Neither is doing good words,
neither is praying to Mary the mother of Jesus, neither is blowing yourself up.
Neither is following every new thing that comes out in the name of Christianity,
it’s been known for gardeners to keep poison in pop bottles. Don’t be fooled,
there is only one way to God the Father, there is only one way to get eternal
life in heaven, so what is the cost?
You don’t have to pay a thing, you don’t
have to earn it, you don’t even have to deserve it, it is all by the grace of
God. Jesus bore our sins on the cross, He took the punishment for your sins,
the only thing we can bring to this is our sin. We have a choice, accept God’s
gracious invitation of forgiveness through His Son, repent. In other words,
acknowledge that you are a sinner, ask God to forgive you, turn in the opposite
direction from the one you have been going in and be born again. Jesus said
that everyone must be born again to enter into God’s eternal kingdom.
Born again what does that mean? It means
when we were born as a baby we were born already sinners, the sin nature was
already in us and so our spirit was dead in sin. Being born again means that
your spirit is alive when you come to Jesus for salvation. From that moment on
we are no longer our own we belong to Christ and so we do His will instead of
our own. People often say, why would a good God send people to hell? My
question is, why would anyone choose hell over a good God? There are only two
choices, God is not just good, gracious, merciful, kind, He is also holy,
righteous and just. If you choose to reject His mercy, then you will come
before Him for judgement and condemnation. Jesus paid the price for us to go to
heaven, those who reject this pay the price of their sin themselves, that price
is hell and damnation. It is worth it? I wouldn’t waste my money on the celebrities,
are you going to waste your life in sin knowing now what it is going to cost?
