There is a Scripture in the Holy Bible that teaches us about people who think they are doing something for God; when in fact these people are not serving God at all.
This is what the Bible says:
“They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” – John 16:2
This is very sad. Maybe you are new Christian and you just started to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour; maybe you have had some dreams about Jesus where Jesus spoke to you and you saw Him in the purity and His holiness. Maybe you know and understand that “the way, the truth, and the life” – John 14:6.
Jesus said: “Beware of false prophets who come dressed up as harmless sheep but inside they really are evil wolves. You can know them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”
Anyone who wants to kill another human being is committing a sin. God gave Moses some laws and one of those laws says: “You will not kill” – Exodus 20:13. Murder is a sin. Jesus said that even if you think in your heart that you want to murder someone, that also is a sin because you have committed murder in your heart. So we cannot murder others and those people who want to commit murder are not serving God they are disobeying Him. God is love and God wants us to forgive others and to pray for them; God does not permit or want or allow us to murder others people. It is a sin.
Other things people do
Killing other people is a sin; the Bible says so. So if you see another person who is very angry and wants to kill another person you know that they are not doing what God wants them to do.
There are other things that people do that are against the things that God would want us to do. For example: racism; corruption in government; wars; and bribery. These things are not from God and whoever does these things has evil thoughts in their heart and is following a path of sin.
God is good and pure and just and right and you can count on him to help you and be with you. God will never leave you; God is always there with you whatever you are going through. God is love. He sent us His Spirit to dwell with us so that we can show others the light of Christ and the love of God.
The fruits of the Spirit
We are the trees that Jesus is talking about. And we either have good fruits or we have bad fruits. If we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts we will have good fruits. If we have the Holy Spirit in our lives we will be kind to others; we will forgive others when they sins against us; we will be gentle and kind to our friends and family and even our enemies. If we have the Holy Spirit in our lives we will be living the way God wants us to live.
Here is what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. Here are the fruits of the Holy Spirit as told to us in the Bible:
“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” – Galatians 5:22-23
This is how God behaves and this is how He wants us to behave. He wants us to love others and be tolerant of their beliefs. If someone believes something different than what we do then we are to accept that person and not do evil things towards them. We are to win them to Christ by our love and actions.
A dream I had
One morning just before I got out of bed I had a dream. I was in Canada and my friend was phoning Somalia or Kenya and he was talking to a Somali Christian. They were talking about the Lord and the radio program that Somali Christian Ministries has going into Africa.
The person talking of the phone in Africa was a woman and she believed in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour. She knew and experienced the love that God has for her. She understood that:
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
“There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” – John 3
But just then we could hear someone getting very angry on the other end of the phone. Someone found out that this Christian woman was talking to Christians and that she had given her heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. We heard someone take our a sword and start yelling and getting very angry. The person with the sword was a man and the man thought that they were serving God by yelling and getting very angry at the woman who became a Christian. You could hear anger and evil in the man’s voice as he yelled and cursed the woman. The woman starting to scream and you could hear noises of a fight happening and then there was silence. The woman was killed because she believed in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour. The woman went to heaven but the man with the sword is on his way to hell.
You have to have a changed heart
Jesus said you will know a tree by the fruit that it has. A banana trees makes bananas; a mango tree makes mangos. A good human being will be kind and generous and peaceful; a bad human being will be evil, angry, lie and murder. In order to make good fruits as a human being you need to be good on the inside.
How can we be good on the inside?
We can learn from this Scriptures. Again we can turn to the Bible to learn what it means to be good on the inside and how we can become good and clean in our hearts. If you know and can see that there is something rotten in your hearts; if you can see that you have something bad in your hearts and you want to be forgiven and made right with God – then the Bible has the answer for you.
You need to ask God to forgive you of your sins and to make you a new person. You have a desire to serve God and be accepted by Him. If you want that then you will have to pray and ask God to come into your life and forgive you of your sins.
God chose to forgive people through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is the eternal Son of God. The Son of God is eternal and has always been alive. One day the Son of God came down to earth into the body of a baby and was born and named Jesus. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. So if you want to be forgiven of your sins then you need to ask Jesus to wash away your sins and cleanse you.
Jesus says:
“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” – Revelation 3:20
“What are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized. Have your sins washed away by calling on the name of the Lord.” – Acts 22:16
If you feel like you need to have your sins forgiven then you are feeling God’s work in your life. We all need to be forgiven of our sins if we want to go to heaven. And nothing but the blood of Jesus will wash away our sins.
Once you have asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins then you will feel and experience the washing power of His blood. People use soap to wash clothes and shampoo to wash our hair but God uses the blood of Jesus to wash away our sins. It is the sin cleansing blood that washed away our sins. Jesus forgives us of our sins because He died on the cross for our sins.
We are filled with the Spirit
Once God has washed away our sins by the blood of Jesus then we are given the Holy Spirit of God into our bodies. This is called being born again. We are born again because God pours out His Holy Spirit into our beings to make us Holy. The Holy Spirit is from God and the Holy Spirit is God.
The Holy Spirit gives us the inner power to live the kind of life that God wants us to live. The Holy Spirit changes our hearts and gives us the ability to make good fruits in our lives. The Holy Spirit helps us to forgive those people who hate us or think evil thoughts about us.
Jesus said:
“I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
Live for God
Do not be afraid. We are all going to die one day. No one will live on earth forever and escape death. We cannot choose the day we die or the way we are going to die. It will happen and come to us in a way that we did not choose and we will die. So if you are going to die then make sure you have eternal life and that your soul is safe with God.
Put your faith in Jesus Christ and you will live forever.