Acknowledging God

I was referred to Ephesians a little while ago and I have been slowly going through the first two chapters and getting a lot out of it.
Paul is so deep and talks about God's love for us and how He blesses us. It was perfect timing to read this because I just started reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. These two seem to tie together so well. In Crazy Love, Francis Chan breaks down everything we know about God but makes it so much more real. He stops us while reading to show us videos on YouTube, to hear him put verbally into words what he is trying to help us understand. It's crazy how much more real things seem when it is broken down in such great detail. I feel like this is something I needed to get me back on my Jesus kick. Just when I felt like I was slipping away, I was introduced to this book and it's helping me grow once again.

In the beginning of Ephesians, Paul reminds us that the blessings here on Earth are nothing compared to those God has waiting for us in Heaven. We may receive great blessings here on Earth like a job, a good health report or even our children. But as harsh as it might sound, all of those blessings will soon fade away. God has such great blessings for us in Heaven they won't even amount to those that we have now on Earth. It's kind of like just a glimpse of what is to come. 
God loves us so much and says love should never be alone; then He gave us that ability to have a deep and intimate relationship with God the Father. In order to receive those blessings in Heaven, we need to maintain this relationship with God. It was brought up in my bible study group, is the saying 'once saved, always saved' true? Absolutely not. This relationship we have with God is always growing. We don't just shake hands with The Father and think just because we met we will be friends forever. We can't have that relationship we might have with our best friend where we can go weeks without talking and still be able to be as close as we were when we last talked. We serve a jealous God. A God that we need to give our whole life to. To keep that deep and intimate relationship with Him we need to always acknowledge Him. Let Him know that He is the center of our world. Everything thing that we do we judge off of our relationship with God.
God knows which one of us are going to be in paradise with Him the day we leave this Earth. God already knows that. Can you honestly say that if you were to die tonight that you would spend eternity with Christ? If not, then there is a lot of work you need to put into prayer and building a stronger relationship with God. We want to be definite! In Crazy Love Francis Chan quotes Frederick Buechner ' On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever.' We go through our every day with to-do lists. We need to go here at this time and see these people and tomorrow we will do the same thing. We seem to have the same routine. But are we really living our lives like today could be our last day? Some people may take that phrase and put into context that we need to do every crazy and fun filled thing today as if we will never get that chance again. In reality we should go through our days serving God and making sure we have that relationship with Him that when we get face to face with God on the day that we die, God will acknowledge us because we spent our days acknowledging and praising Him. Matthew 10:33 says 'But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.'

We need to fully understand that love God has for us and that we need to return it back to Him and others. We will receive so many blessings in Heaven, but that's not why we serve God. We will serve God because He gave His only son so that we may have eternal life. That's us...we mortal, selfish, disobedient, arrogant, cold hearted and ugly humans. Christ gave His life for us, before we were even a speck on this Earth, because He loved us. The least we can do is acknowledge Him every day of our lives. The least we can do is praise Him here on earth. The least we can do is surrender our lives to Him. Because when that day comes and we take our last breath, don't we want to be able to look God in the eye and have Him smile back at us as He direct us through the gates that lead into His Kingdom?

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