If you have questions, I pray this wonderful article written by my good friend Bruce Toews will help answer some of them.
God created humans because He wanted to be worshipped. He could have just created us like robots, hardwired to automatically say and do all the right things, but that wouldn’t have been true worship, so God gave us free will. It wasn’t enough that we say and do all the right things, He wanted us to choose Him. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, that introduced sin into the world, and that was a problem. But, God being God, He already had the solution planned. You can read all about the fall of humanity, including how God had already planned for reconciliation, in Genesis chapter 3.
Sin is imperfection, and the only way you can cancel out imperfection is with total perfection. So God sent His son, Jesus, who is Himself God, the only perfect man who ever lived, to take on the price of our sins (John 1:1-5; John 14:6). The Apostle Paul in the Bible says that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23A). Only the death of a perfect person could possibly pay the price of humanity’s sins. Jesus, being fully God and fully human, was able to pay that price with His death on the cross, and His subsequent rising from the dead to conquer death. In three days, Jesus conquered death and sin, for all eternity. He paid the price that we, being sinful people, could never pay. While Paul does say that the wages of sin is death, he immediately goes on to say that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23B). The death which we all deserve is not the end of the story.
And that’s why you can’t earn your way into Heaven. If you have committed even one sin in your life, and that means all of us over and over again, you are unable to earn your way into Heaven. But because Jesus paid the price in full, we don’t have to worry about paying something we could never pay. What we need to do is to humbly accept what God has given us. How do you go about doing that?
1. Acknowledge your sins. Admit to God that you have sinned, that you’ve done, said, and thought things that you shouldn’t. You fall into that category, I fall into it, the greatest theologians in history fall into it, we all do. Paul says that there are no righteous people, not even one (Romans 3:10).
2. Tell God that you believe He has paid the price for your since by dying and coming back to life. You can’t accept a gift unless you believe that the gift has been offered in the first place. Thank God for what He has made possible through His death and resurrection. Thank Him for the infinite love He has for you (John 1:12).
3. Ask Jesus into your life; ask Him to change you and to help you to live according to His plan. That doesn’t mean religion – religion is our response to God. Going to church and so on are good things, to be sure, but anyone can sit in a pew, bow their head, and sing songs, while not meaning any of it. What God wants, and what He offers, are so much more: He wants a personal relationship with us (Revelation 3:20). He knows our names, He knows how many hairs are on our heads (Matthew 10:30), He knows us better than we know ourselves, and He wants a personal, one-on-one relationship with us. So if you ask Him to change your life, you can surrender your life to Him. Ironically, if you surrender completely to Him, you will be freer than you’ve ever been before (1 Corinthians 7:22).
So how do you tell and Ask God these things? There’s no magic word you have to use, no “holy language” you have to speak. That’s part of the relationship. You tell and ask God these things in your own way. God knows your heart. He knows your sincerity and your intentions. And however you approach Him, He will listen to you, and He will always treat you as if you were the only person who mattered to Him. He is never, and will never be, too busy for you. He loves you, and even if you’d been the only one who needed saving, He would have gladly done all these wonderful things just for you. That’s more love than any human could possibly give, and it’s the most wonderful gift imaginable.
If you have any questions, please contact us. We don’t pretend to have all the answers, we’re just human too, but we care and we’ll do our best.