Have you ever heard it said, “God has a wonderful plan for your life. He will give you peace, joy, and strength if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior”?. We Christians tend to be so zealous for the Lord that we sometimes make promises we can not keep. Nowhere in the Bible are we promised a “wonderful plan for our lives.” So what happens if a person accepts Yeshua (Jesus) because we promise them a wonderful plan for their lives? Soon they will have a rude awakening and understand being a Christian does not exempt you from being a human. You are still human, and because you are still human, you will experience grief, loss, heartache, sadness, loneliness, sickness, death, and things that will give you good reason to worry at night.
So why then should anyone want to be a Christian and accept Yeshua if the only thing Christianity has to offer is a “ticket to heaven”?
There is a difference between the religion of Christianity and what the Bible says. The doctrine of Christianity can only offer a counterfeit “ticket to heaven” and can not solve any problems here on earth. The Bible, on the other hand, can provide an accurate, valid ticket to heaven and solve our problems here on earth. So we have to make a choice, do we listen only to what human-made Christianity has to say? Or do we listen to what the Bible says?
When I first got saved in 2001, I came to Christ to be forgiven of my sins, not to experience “God’s wonderful plan for my life.” I quickly discovered that even though I was forgiven, I was still human faced with the same problems and the same circumstances as before my salvation. Some issues and situations I felt I could handle on my own, but some were too big and beyond my control.
When I read my Bible, I saw a God who intervened in the life of His people, the Jews. I saw a God whom I could trust that cared for my eternal salvation and the life I am living here and now. In the Bible, I saw a God who wanted to have a relationship with His people here on earth, a relationship like any other relationship where both have an equal responsibility to maintain the relationship.
In mainstream Christianity, I was told God had changed; now, He did not want a relationship with Me. He only wanted a relationship with Jesus. But if I believed in Jesus and accepted what He had done for me, I would get to share in everything God wanted to give His Son Jesus. I did not have to do anything, I only had to believe, and because God did not want Jesus to be in need, I would not need anything as long as I believed in Him.
When I observed my brothers and sisters in mainstream Christianity, I saw a lot of people claiming to believe in Jesus. Still, they were just as stressed out, fearful, worried, and unable to handle life as any other unsaved person in the world. I saw a lot of my brothers and sisters claiming the promises of God through Jesus, but I also saw the desperation in their eyes when nothing happened. I observed so many of my brothers and sisters trying to handle life by venturing outside the Bible and mixing in other faiths hoping that would help them with being human.
All of this made me start to question why there was such a massive discrepancy between the God I read about in the Bible and the god I was told about in mainstream Christianity.
As the years went by, I tried living as a mainstream Christian, but in the end, people started seeing the desperation in my eyes when the promises of God went unfulfilled. Do not get me wrong; I never doubted the fact that I was saved and on my way to heaven because of the Blood of Jesus. What I could not understand was that if God did not want Jesus to be in need, and I was in Jesus because I believed in Him, why then did I have needs that were not being met?
A few years ago, I decided to stop listening to pastors and preachers, and instead listen to the Bible and only the Bible. I wanted to get to know the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who parted the Red Sea and rained manna from heaven. The God who loves me enough to give me His Son Yeshua to die for my sins (John 3:16). My desire to get to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob led me on a quest to recover what I once had back in 2001, a relationship with the God whose name is Yehovah.
The more I listened to the Bible; I understood how the Torah (the written law of Moses) is still in effect today. I saw how the Bible says in 1. John 2:6 and James 2:10-26 that if we want to have eternal life, we have to be united with Christ. If we’re going to be united with Christ, we have to live our lives the way He did. He lived His life with Yehovah as the object of His faith, not with Himself as the object of His faith.
So I decided to change my life, I started obeying the Torah, and I started having Yehovah as the object of my faith. Dont get me wrong, I do not deny Christ or the divinity of Yeshua. His divinity is never in question; He is God and the Son of Yehovah. But at the same time, I can’t deny the fact that He says in the Gospels, “my Father is greater than I” and “nobody can come to the Father except through Me.” If we only listen to the Bible, it is undeniable we are to be reconciled to Yehovah by faith in the cross and repentance back to Torah obedience, not reconciled to Yeshua.
The past three weeks have been rough weeks for me. Back in 2018, my wife and I were approved for a debt settlement, and we did everything right. We have since then kept our end of the agreement, paid what we agreed to each month. At the same time, the payroll office at work has messed things up for us. Nobody understands what they are doing, but they are making a lot of mistakes affecting our paycheck and making it very difficult for us to pay the monthly installments on our debt settlement.
October of this year, they made another mistake, and that had such far-reaching consequences for us, we dont have the money we need to pay on our debt settlement in November and December. So even though we are doing everything right, the sins of the payroll officer at work are threatening our one chance to pay off our debt.
This is a situation outside our control, and too big for either of us to try to resolve in our strength. It has the potential to give us great fear and a good reason to worry because we dont know how to pay off our debt if we should lose our debt settlement. But the truth is, for the past three weeks, we have both lived in perfect peace. We have slept like a log each night; we have not been worried, not anxious, not stressed out. Nothing miraculous has happened, our situation remains today unchanged, but we are at peace. We get to experience John 14.
Why have we been blessed with peace amid this storm? Because we are listening only to the Bible, and we are doing what the Bible says, not what our pastor says.
There are times when we have been and still are tempted to be fearful and worried. But when the temptation comes, we decide to focus our minds on the name of Yehovah. This is what Yeshua did, and the Bible says if we want salvation, we have to be one with Him by living our lives the way He did. (1. John 2:6). We make sure to keep the Torah and obey every commandment applicable to our gender, living outside Israel, without access to a temple. So we keep Shabbat every Friday, we do not eat anything unclean, and we keep every other commandment applicable to us.
Because we are listening to the Bible and obeying what the Bible says, we are now in a relationship with Yehovah through faith in the cross and repentance from lawlessness. This relationship we have with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has not changed our circumstances. We are still faced with the possibility we could lose our debt settlement. But instead of running around with desperation in our eyes, we have peace, AND we have no problem trusting that somehow Yehovah will turn this around to our advantage and His glory. We dont know-how, we dont know when, but we know it will happen because He is God, and He never changes. So if He did it for our forefathers in the desert, He would do it for you and us if you will repent back to Him and have Him as the object of your faith.
So I am challenging you today to choose who you will listen to, the Bible, or your pastor? Yehovah wrote the Bible; your pastor/church leaders/denominational leaders did not write the Bible. They will one day end up in hell if they do not obey the Bible, do not join them.
Being a Christian does not exempt you from all the challenges and circumstances that come with being a human. You are still going to have good days and days that suck big time. There will always be times when you will feel sadness, grief, joy, laughter, fear, anxiety, worry. And at times, you will go through seasons in life that will give you good reason to feel great fear.
So why then would anyone want to become a Christian?
True Christianity, based on the Bible, will give you a relationship with Yehovah. Yehovah is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of Yeshua who loves us so much He gave us His Son Yeshua to die on the cross for our sins. He is the God who parted the Red Sea, rained manna from heaven, raised the dead, healed the sick, and cast a legion of demons out of a demonic possed man. He is the God who cares not only for your salvation but for your well being here and now on earth.
He has never promised you a carefree life; He does not guarantee you a life without any problems. But He promises to be with you even in the darkest days of your life, to provide for you, to heal you, to give you the strength to endure and salvation to fight your enemies and see victory over them. Sometimes He will fight for you, and you will not have to do anything; other times, He will tell you to fight and give you the strength to kill your Goliath.
Why would anyone want to become a Christian?
Who in their right mind would reject the offer to have a relationship with Yehovah, the God who created everything and has all power, all authority, and all knowledge?
Accept His offer today, repent from living a lawless life and start obeying the Torah with Yehovah as the object of your faith.
I can guarantee you from personal experience; you will not be disappointed.