Believe the Instrument and not your emotions.

Believers in Christ, have you ever wondered if you are really saved? Do you wonder if our Heavenly Father hears your prayers? Do you examine your life and (because it's not perfectly sinless) wonder if you will be caught up with the saints when our Lord Jesus returns? Do you think that you will be left behind when the trumpet sounds?

These thoughts are akin to what John Kennedy Jr. felt before he died in a plane crash. Right before he crashed his plane into the sea, he experienced a confusion that pilots call vertigo - a disorientation that arises within pilots as they struggle with reason and emotion regarding direction while flying. He lost his sense of direction. Visibility was low. Kennedy was flying downwards and into the sea but his mind told him that he was sitting in an upright position! At the same moment he was feeling perfectly right-side up, his aircraft instruments told him that the nose of his plane was pointing downwards! What to believe!

Kennedy decided to go with his reasoning/emotions. He discarded his aircraft instruments' signals. He told himself over and over "This instrument must be faulty. I know that I'm sitting and flying upright. I can feel it!" But he was wrong. He piloted his aircraft to a downward spiral into the sea - and death!

Believers, we need to trust in what our Instrument - the Word of Christ - says! Romans 10:17 says 

"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

Some bible versions like KJV and NKJV have "hearing by the word of God" but this is an incorrect translation. The original Greek text says "word of Christ." The law, including the Ten Commandments, is also the word of God but "the law is not of faith," and "without faith it is impossible to please God" The letter kills.

Believers, by His grace, stop doing and start believing Jesus. Our emotions and reasoning lead us astray all the time but the Word of God never fails. John 3:16 tells us that "...whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe that He died for you and has paid the full price for all of your sins? Do you believe that God loves you and has made you His righteousness in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21)? Then you have everlasting life, even though don't feel it sometimes or don't "have it all together" right now.

Do you believe the Holy Spirit-inspired words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16 

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. 17 Then, together with them, WE WHO ARE STILL ALIVE AND REMAIN ON THE EARTH will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words."

I put some words in caps for emphasis. Did you notice that Paul said "we who are still alive and remain on the earth" and not "we who are fasting, keeping the Ten Commandments and doing good deeds?" Wonderful as these things are, they cannot save anybody. Doing these things with the aim of getting right with God or gaining His favour and blessings only serve to cut one off from Christ. Galatians 5:4 says-
"For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace."

But this is what we are told to do in most churches today- keep the law in order to be right with God so He can bless us! If our salvation (including the Rapture- the final gift in the package of our salvation that Christ died that we might have) depended on our own efforts by a millionth of a hair's breadth, no one will make it. Romans 3:20 says "For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are."

The criteria for being caught up with Christ at the Rapture is to believe in Jesus and be alive and remain on the earth when it happens. This is what our Instrument says. Your mind, other people, especially the devil's ministers in many churches today and circumstances might tell you that it takes much more on your part. But whose report do you believe? This is Grace - undeserved unmerited favour. It does take much more - a 'much more' that Jesus has already done for us.

Believers, believe the Instrument - the Word of Christ- and not your emotions and human reasoning. Our emotions and reasoning fail us all the time but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. His word will never fail.

The Holy Spirit will teach you all things.

Believe Right and you will Live Right!

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