Sometimes I Think Its a Sin When I Feel Like Im Winning but Im Losing Again

Practice whatever of these sound familiar?

• Every Sunday the preacher shouted from the pulpit that you lot're a terrible sinner. God is angry at you lot. Because of God's wrath, you're going to burn in hell for all eternity.
• Your parents drilled it into y'all that yous're just no good. And they're probably correct. You just can't feel practiced about annihilation yous exercise.
• Y'all've done terrible things . . . horrible things. What you lot've washed is so bad that yous deserve to be in hell. There is no hope for you. You're a goner.
• No matter how hard you try, you but can't be good. You lot know what you should do, but you only keep on doing the things you shouldn't do.

If any of these are much too familiar for you, I'll be straight: At that place are no easy answers. Likewise, yous've probably tried the easy answers already, and learned the difficult mode that they don't piece of work.

I'thou also non going to tell y'all that all you have to do is believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus is smashing. I highly recommend information technology! Existence born again is wonderful! Simply for Christians, believing in Jesus is simply the outset. Then come the many years of growing from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity.

The fact is, if whatever of the things on this list depict your feel, and then no matter how y'all piece information technology, you lot've got some hard piece of work to do. And it may take years to fully recover, even with God's assistance.

What I can offering you is new lite and a new understanding of your situation. Zippo I say will snap you lot right out of it and instantly make your life a bed of roses. But it volition requite you hope that in that location is a path out. And it might help you accept your next steps on that path toward the life of sky God has in heed for yous.

No affair what that preacher or your parents or anyone else has said, God created you for sky, not for hell. And there is no reason on earth that you can't observe your way to sky . . . no matter what your history.

Then let's straighten a few things out.

Is a wrathful God angry at you?

The brusk respond is: No.

Huh?!?

Then what virtually all those Bible passages the preacher quoted almost God's wrath and fury?

Doesn't the Bible say, "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day" (Psalm vii:11, Male monarch James Version)?

Well, there's a funny story about that verse . . .

First, the give-and-take for "the wicked" came from an ancient Aramaic (or "Chaldee") version. It is not in the original Hebrew text, nor is it in the other aboriginal translations. Even in the King James Version, the words "with the wicked" are in italics, meaning they are non in the original. And so it should read, "God judges the righteous, and God is aroused every mean solar day."

But wait, there'southward more!

You see, the Hebrew word for "God" in the 2d half of the verse could also mean "not," depending on how the Hebrew is interpreted. And that's exactly what most of ancient translations, including the well-known Septuagint Greek translation, accept in that verse. The first half of the verse is too a little off in some of the older English translations.

What does this all hateful?

The verse almost certainly should read, "God is a righteous judge, and is not aroused all day." (Compare Immature's Literal Translation for this verse.)

Picture a approximate taking hundreds of cases, 1 after another, pronouncing just judgments all twenty-four hours without always getting angry, even at the worst evildoers. That'southward the picture the Psalmist is painting. And it's just the opposite of what that quondam burn down and brimstone preacher said!

Now, don't get me incorrect. There are lots of other verses in the Bible that talk about God'southward anger and wrath. But equally I pointed out in the commodity, "If God is Honey, Why all the Pain and Suffering?" that's but how God's love looks to us when we're bent on an evil and destructive path that'due south opposed to God's love.

God's love is like the warmth of the lord's day. But what if you're a snowman? What if you want to exist common cold and unloving? If you lot're a snowman, God's dear looks wrathful and subversive. It's a horrible, destructive heat that melts and destroys y'all.

When the Bible talks about God's wrath, information technology'southward talking about the event God'south dearest has on everything that's evil and false in us and in our world. Information technology's only when we identify with the evil and cling to information technology as our ain that we experience God's love as anger and wrath. And the Bible oftentimes speaks to united states co-ordinate to the fashion things seem to us, even if the reality is unlike from God'southward perspective.

Did yous know that the Bible talks about God's love far more than often than it talks about God's wrath? Hither is a beautiful passage assuring us that God feels merely love toward us, whether we are evil or good:

You have heard that it was said, "Y'all shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to yous, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that yous may be children of your Father in sky; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the proficient, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:43–45)

And the famous verses from the Gospel of John:

For God so loved the earth that he gave his simply Son, so that anybody who believes in him may non perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did non send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the globe might be saved through him. (John 3:16–17)

Notice that information technology doesn't say God was then angry with the earth, but God then loved the world.

So hither's the first ray of new light, and the most important new information about your situation: No matter what you may have been told, God is not aroused at you. It'due south only the opposite. No affair what you have done, and no matter how horrible or worthless a person you lot think you lot are, God loves you.

God sends you lot the lord's day of divine dearest, and the rain of divine truth, whether you are evil or good, and whether you are righteous or unrighteous.

There is zip you can do to make God stop loving you. Equally the Psalm says:

O Lord, yous accept examined me, and you know me. . . .
If I go upwards to heaven, you are at that place.
If I make my bed in hell, you are in that location.
(Psalm 139:1, 8)

Are yous condemned because of what your parents did?

Our parents were responsible for bringing us into this globe. They are supposed to beloved us, treat the states, teach us correct from incorrect, and guide u.s. toward a healthy and responsible adulthood. And some of us were fortunate plenty to accept parents who did a fine job.

Unfortunately, some of us were born of parents who brutal far short of the mark. Maybe they merely weren't ready to take children. Mayhap they were too focused on money or power or pleasure to really care about their children. Maybe they were just plain evil and subversive types who used and abused their children at will. Bad parents can cause great impairment to their children.

If you lot were i of those unfortunate children, does this mean your life is ruined from the start, and you might too merely throw in the towel?

In ancient times, it was common for whole families to be condemned and executed for the offenses of the head of the household. For example, when iii men named Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against God's commandments to the ancient Hebrews about the priesthood, not only they, but their wives and children died as a result of their disobedience. You can read the story in Numbers 16.

Nevertheless, in course of time, God pronounced an end to the practice of children being judged guilty for the crimes of their parents. This pronouncement comes in Ezekiel 18—i of the most beautiful chapters in the Hebrew Bible. Hither's how the affiliate begins:

The word of the Lord came to me: What practise y'all hateful by repeating this saying concerning the land of Israel, "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children'southward teeth are attack edge"? As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used past y'all in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent besides as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die. (Ezekiel 18:1–4)

The chapter then goes on to explicate in detail that if a father is practiced, but his son evil, then just the son shall be held guilty; and if that son has a son who sees how his father lived, and resolves not to live that mode, but to live a good life instead, and then only the male parent, not the son, shall be held guilty.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

To us today, yes. Our justice organization is based on individual innocence and guilt. To the ancient Israelites, though, this seemed quite unjust. They thought it was right and proper that if a man sins, his whole family should be punished!

God was quite articulate, though, that this was not to be our do anymore:

When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall exist his own. (Ezekiel 18:nineteen–twenty)

Notwithstanding, when information technology comes to our spiritual and emotional life, sometimes we haven't gotten the message. We remember that because our parents were evil, and neglected or mistreated usa, that means nosotros, too, are doomed, and headed toward hell.

It'south not true.

Yes, we may have a long, difficult road undoing the damage that our parents did to us. It might have much prayer, counseling, and much difficult and painful introspection and rearranging of our emotional and social life.

But God does not concur us responsible for the errors and sins of our parents. And neither should we. If our parents drilled into the states that we're just no good, they were lying to us. And if they used and driveling us, they were perpetrating evil on the states.

That lying and that evil was theirs, not ours. And though information technology did have a profound event on us, at that place is a pathway out of the impairment our parents did to us. Information technology is the path of recognizing that what our parents did to us had nothing to do with us. It was their own immaturity, fail, and evil, not ours, that damaged us. As we recognize that what they said was not true, and what they did was just patently wrong, we can gradually recognize that we ourselves are non what they said we were, nor did nosotros deserve what they did to us.

If you were neglected or abused verbally or physically past your parents, information technology is not going to exist an piece of cake path out of what they did to yous. Merely there is a path. And it starts with recognizing that you are not condemned for the sins of your parents. God created you for a reason. God loves you lot, and has prepared a place for you in heaven (see John 14:1–iii, ane Corinthians 2:9).

You have the rest of your life to leave backside the lies and the wrongs that were inflicted on you when you were immature. Y'all take the rest of your life to walk, even if painfully sometimes, the path toward the life of heaven that God has prepared for you lot.

Take you committed terrible sins?

What if information technology wasn't your parents who did a number on you lot? What if you yourself have done terrible, horrible things? What if you don't deserve to become to heaven because of what y'all've done?

If that's the state of heed you lot're in, and so Ezekiel xviii has a message for y'all as well:

But if the wicked plough away from all their sins that they accept committed and keep all my statutes and do what is lawful and correct, they shall surely live; they shall not die. None of the transgressions that they accept committed shall be remembered confronting them; for the righteousness that they have washed they shall live. Have I whatever pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? (Ezekiel eighteen:21–23, emphasis added)

Based on his experience in the spiritual world, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) tells us that this is precisely how information technology works after nosotros die. In Heaven and Hell #509, he writes:

No ane suffers whatsoever punishment for evil things done in the earth, only for electric current evil deeds. . . . Adept spirits are never punished, though, even though they take done bad things in the globe. This is because their evils do not come dorsum.

Swedenborg is simply affirming what God tells us in Ezekiel 18: We are not held responsible for things we take done in the past. Just for things we continue doing in the present. If nosotros have done something terrible in the past, simply have repented of it, accept reformed our character, and no longer do things like that, then none of the transgressions we have committed will be remembered against usa.

If you accept done something terrible, at that place is no way to disengage information technology. You and those you hurt will still accept to alive with the repercussions of your deportment. Simply one of those repercussions is not that you lot must become to hell for it.

Of course, if there is whatever way y'all can make amends for what you take done, you lot should certainly exercise so. All the same, when your time on this earth comes to an end, you will detect your place in heaven or in hell depending on the person y'all accept get in the present, and the style you are living now, not based on any wrongs you have done in the past.

Equally the old proverb goes, "Every saint has a past, and every sinner a future."

So please don't worry about the terrible things you have done in the past. God has already forgiven you for them. God has no pleasure in your eternal death. No matter what you've washed, God wants you to turn from your old means and live! At present it's time to build a new life for yourself, and so that you lot won't do things like that anymore. For more than on how to do this, run into the commodity, "What does Jesus Mean when He Says we Must exist Built-in Again?"

What if you proceed doing things you shouldn't?

It sounds like y'all're in the same boat every bit the apostle Paul when he wrote:

I know that my selfish desires won't allow me exercise anything that is good. Fifty-fifty when I want to exercise right, I cannot. Instead of doing what I know is right, I practise wrong. . . . In every part of me I discover something fighting confronting my listen, and it makes me a prisoner of sin that controls everything I do. What a miserable person I am! (Romans 7:eighteen–19, 23–24)

Every bit he went on to say, Paul plant a rescue from this situation in Jesus Christ. However, equally I said before, for Christians, assertive in Jesus Christ is just the first step. After that comes the more challenging steps of living co-ordinate to Christ's teachings.

And for many of us who are very sensitive about our own wrongs and our own bad habits, one of the ways we don't follow Christ's teachings is to lay burdens on ourselves that are much too heavy—and are sometimes completely unnecessary.

In a contempo article titled, "Is it Easy or Hard to Get to Sky?" I expanded on this saying of Jesus:

Come up to me, all y'all that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give y'all rest. Accept my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in middle, and you will discover rest for your souls. For my yoke is piece of cake, and my burden is lite. (Matthew 11:28–30)

I invite you to read that article if you feel you but can't alive up to what you lot know is right.

Hither's some other thought that might aid:

Have you lot considered that even though yous have some bad habits, and do some things that actually aren't proficient, mayhap they aren't really evil either?

Let'due south confront it: neither you nor I nor anyone else is ever going to be perfect. Each one of us will die every bit an imperfect human being, however thinking, feeling, maxim, and doing some things that we actually shouldn't.

What we need is some standard by which to decide just how serious our bad habits and wrong actions are.

In that location are many possible standards. In case you don't have 1 that works for you, may I propose something really unproblematic? The Ten Commandments. Particularly the second part of the 10 Commandments, which is almost how we humans are supposed to comport toward one another. I'1000 talking especially nigh these commandments (in their short versions):

• Accolade your begetter and your mother.
• Y'all shall not murder.
• You shall not commit adultery.
• You shall non steal.
• You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
• You shall non covet.

"Covet" is an quondam-fashioned word pregnant wanting something that belongs to someone else. The problem with coveting is that it tends to lead to the other offenses: murder, adultery, stealing, and lying.

And about honoring your male parent and your mother, if the parents who raised you abdicated their parental responsibilities and did a number on you, feel free to retrieve of God as your father and your mother instead. (For more on this, encounter "The Mother of All the Living.")

Now hither'southward the question: Are the things you're currently doing that are wrong actually against whatever of these commandments? Are yous killing people, committing infidelity, stealing, lying about other people, and then on?

If the respond is yes, then you lot do accept a existent problem—and you demand to do the work of rebirth or "regeneration" in lodge to overcome it.

But if you're not actually breaking any of these commandments, it'south quite possible that you're laying as well heavy a burden on yourself. Do you think yous take to be perfect in lodge to get to heaven?

I'thou not saying y'all shouldn't continue to work on yourself. I'm not maxim you shouldn't keep taking steps to give upwards your bad habits and stop doing hurtful and destructive things. There is always room for improvement.

Only are the incorrect things you lot say and practice really bad enough that you should become to hell for them? Chances are, they are not. They are only areas where you still have piece of work to exercise.

So go a fiddling like shooting fish in a barrel on yourself. The very fact that yous're concerned most your eternal state, and desire to get a improve person, suggests that you are on the path to heaven, non on that slippery slope to hell.

God wants Yous in heaven

God wants YOU for heaven

Maybe you've given upwardly on yourself. But God hasn't given up on you. If God had given up on yous, you would no longer be live on this earth. In fact, hither'southward a thought to take home with you lot:

Every bit long as y'all are alive and animate on this earth, you can still notice your way to heaven.

God has given us a lifetime here on earth because God knows that it takes some of us many years to whip ourselves into shape—with God's help, of class. So use your time here well. Then you volition not be disappointed when your time on earth is finished, and you motion on to the next life.

If you nonetheless retrieve you're going to hell, consider these concluding words from Ezekiel 18:

Therefore I will guess y'all, O house of State of israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and plough from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity volition be your ruin. Bandage abroad from yous all the transgressions that y'all take committed against me, and go yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you lot die, O business firm of Israel? For I take no pleasance in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and alive! (Ezekiel eighteen:30–32)

Why would God say these words to us if God did not know and wait that we tin can go out our past behind, and live a new life?

Heaven is possible for you! The pick is yours. God will be with you lot, guiding and strengthening yous every step of the way, because God loves you and cares about you. God has a job for you in sky, and has prepared a home for you at that place. Do yous actually desire to leave it vacant?

For further reading:

• Ezekiel 18: God's Message of Hope . . . If Yous Think in that location's No Promise for Y'all
• Is information technology Easy or Hard to Go to Heaven?
• How Can a Criminal Get to Heaven?
• What is the Unpardonable Sin? Am I Doomed?
• What does Jesus Hateful when He Says nosotros Must be Built-in Over again?
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Pregnant of Life on Earth

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Source: https://leewoof.org/2014/01/16/if-you-think-youre-going-to-hell-please-read-this-first/

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