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Which One of Your Kids Would You Send to Hell?

"I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself." Jeremiah 31:3

"What kind of a God would send people to hell? I don't want to believe in a God like that!"

Have you ever heard that sentiment from others...or had your own doubts like this about your so-called "loving God?" There are so many unbelievers who reject Christianity for this very notion. There are many uninformed Christians who walk away for the same.

Let me ask you this: Do you have children? Which one of your kids would you choose to send to hell forever? Say you HAD to pick one. Such is the type of questions posed by God to the main character in the novel by William Young, "The Shack." Of course, we who are parents would say, "There's no way I'd pick any one of my kids to go to hell. I couldn't. I wouldn't. I love them too much. That's ridiculous to even suggest."

As much as you love your kids (if you don't have kids, imagine for a moment)--and you didn't even create them--don't you think our Heavenly Father, who loves all His children more than earthly parents have ever dreamed about, must adamantly feel the same way? How could He any more pick some of His children for that kind of fate than we could pick our own children?

If all this is true--and it is--then why and how do people get sent to eternal damnation? Perhaps we need a new perspective...

Hell was not made for you. In Matthew 25:41, Jesus let us in on the truth that, even though many would end up there, hell was not made or intended for people. "Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, 'Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons!" So how do people end up in hell?

God created you with a certain, special, miraculous, God-like power. In his book, "Raising Your Children for Christ," Andrew Murray says, "Of all the wonderful powers with which God has endowed man, his will--the power of determining what he does, and so what he is--is the most wonderful. This is the deepest trait of the divine image. Just as God was of Himself and not of another, so He gave man to a very large extent the power of deciding and making himself...of making decisions and fashioning his own being and destiny for eternity. God's highest gift to man was the freedom to choose the will of his God."

People send themselves to hell. The Heavenly Father who IS LOVE doesn't pick and choose which of His children go to hell. Instead He made us in the divine image and endowed us with the power to choose--either to respond to His love and choose eternity with Him...or to exert our will through unbelief, sending ourselves to hell. He is not the mean taskmaster we have often determined. He is the loving God who gave us true freedom to "make ourselves"...either in His image, or in our own.

Opinions change nothing. Whether or not we believe in God or believe in His goodness has no bearing upon the facts. He is good, and loving, and so much more. If we don't believe, it's because we've remade a false god in our own image. God is our Father...our Abba...our daddy. He loves us and would never want any of His children to go to hell. He wants you to freely choose Him today so you can live forever. That has always been His intent since the first day He created people.

Will you choose your Heavenly Father's love? Or will you choose to send yourself to hell?

The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise to return, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to perish, so he is giving more time for everyone to repent. 2 Peter 3:9

July 6, 2008 | 2 Comments | View or add comments

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Are We Fruitful or Disappointing?

This has been a disappointing week. First, I was out on a walk, enjoying the prolific flowers we've had after an unusually wet spring. I went from flowering tree, to flowering bush, to flowering gardens, sniffing away, with much the same results. Hardly any of the beguiling flowers had a fragrance!

Then, after a few recent weeks of hot, dry weather, we're in need of rain. The past three days, big thunderheads rolled in over the mountains each afternoon. And each time, the same result: not even a drop of moisture.

To top it off, I bought some rather expensive cherries at the grocery store, since they're one of my favorite summer fruits. Throughout the whole bag, about one out of 8 were enjoyably sweet. The rest were either tasteless or sour. By this time, I was pretty sure it was a conspiracy!

There's nothing worse than when you have your hopes up, counting on something to be a certain way, and it just doesn't happen. Like when a beautiful flower has no fragrance, or a stormy sky doesn't deliver moisture, or a bag of cherries turns out to be the pits.

There was a time when Jesus felt disappointed, too. He was hungry, and he saw a fig tree in full leaf, which meant it should have fruit. But as he neared the tree, it was completely void of fruit. He cursed the fig tree and it withered and died (see Mark 11:12-14).

Perhaps this situation was the real life inspiration for His parable in Luke 13. Either way, Jesus made a point for us today. There's nothing more disappointing than people who put on the "show" of a fruitful life, beckoning the spiritually hungry from a distance, yet up close one finds that it was only false advertising.

There are many believers today who can look good from a distance, pretending to be someone different in public than they are at home, or pretending to have answers that end up shallow and untried in their own lives. But these pretenders have no authentic or lasting fruit-bearing properties about their lives because they're only in it for show. And when the world approaches them hungry, they go away disappointed and empty.

As Christians we should, by default, be living advertisements of the solution to people's spiritual hunger. What are we doing to bear genuine tasty fruit in our daily lives? Are we pursuing authenticity, humility, dependence on God, and obedience? Is God building wisdom into our lives through our teachable hearts? It's only when we pursue these virtues that people will indeed find something worthwhile about us up close. But on the flip side, remember the sobering fate of a life for show--chopped down and destroyed.

Offer your life to the Gardener today so that you might bear lasting, life-giving fruit for all who pass by.

Then Jesus used this illustration: "A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I've waited three years, and there hasn't been a single fig! Cut it down. It's taking up space we can use for something else.'" Luke 13:6-7

June 23, 2008 | 1 Comment | View or add comments

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