Misty Fitch | Fearfully Made

Earlier this week I posted to my FB page about a conversation I had with my son on the way to school.  I said I would tell my thoughts after I hear other people’s thoughts first.    I decided to do that here in my blog.  If you have followed my posts for any amount of time, you know I usually focus on life and living life and being confident and give encouraging words to my readers.  It doesn’t tend to go deep into Biblical happenings, but sometimes it’s just necessary.  This is one of those times.

I love getting into conversations like this with my little 1^st grader.  He amazes me because of how deep his thoughts go. He’s always been that way, and I hope it never changes.  He’s extremely intelligent, and he by far exceeds my intelligence already in some areas.

For those who missed it, here was my post:

My sweet, contemplative son and I were talking this morning after listening to Pastor Greg on the way to school. He was going over the Lord’s Prayer, and I turned it down to ask him if he understood what forgiveness really means. We say it all the time to him, but I wasn’t sure he completely understood. In the process of talking about it, he said something I had never thought of before. I’d love to hear your thoughts: “If someone hasn’t asked Jesus into their hearts then they can always ask for forgiveness for their sins, but they won’t be forgiven. Only when Jesus lives in their hearts will God forgive them.”

My thoughts :

All I can say is WOW!  Have you ever really thought about that?  It’s just not something that has ever gone through my mind, so it made me stop and think.  I mean, I just always think about asking God to forgive us for our sins, but never have I considered the fact that not everyone has made a decision to follow Christ in their daily walk.

So never having considered this, I realized it makes absolute sense.  Jesus’ death and resurrection was planned long before it ever occurred, and it happened for a specific purpose.  It was as a gift to us, though it’s difficult to think of what had to happen in order for us to have this gift.  

Jesus died in order for us to be forgiven for our sins so God could see us as righteous – because, as you know, we are all far from it.  However, in order for us to be forgiven and be seen as righteous, we must FIRST accept this gift. 

I Want Salsa!

It’s no different than getting a gift for your birthday – a blender, for instance.  So you have this awesome blender (my favorite is the Ninja BTW), and it’s sitting on your counter still in the box 3 months later.  You just haven’t had time to open it and use it.  Maybe you’ve been craving fresh salsa.  You’ve thought of making it since you have all the ingredients you need just sitting there in your refrigerator.  Every day, you look at the box and the ingredients you have on hand, but you just don’t want to go through the trouble of ripping the tape, opening the box, putting the blender together, and putting in all the ingredients.  You really want some salsa, but not that badly.  You can do this every day, but you will never get to enjoy the homemade goodness until you take the gift that’s already been given to you and let it serve its purpose.  Sure, you can want your own homemade salsa really badly, and you can even ask for it until you’re blue in the face, but you won’t sit down to dip those crunchy tortilla chips in it until you take the steps required to make it.

Blenders . . . Forgiveness . . . What in the World?

You see, my sweet 7 year old is correct.  Everyone has already been given this gift of being forgiven for the mistakes they make.  You can want to be forgiven all day long, and you can even ask for it, but if you’ve never taken the appropriate steps to receive and “open” this gift, you can’t utilize it for its purpose.

In order to be forgiven, you must first acknowledge you have this gift sitting in front of you.  You must accept it.  You must follow the steps required to open it.  The coolest thing about it. . . it’s so EASY to receive it and open it up:

3 Simple Steps to Utilize this Gift:

1. Acknowledge the gift is in front of you and you want it and need it.  In other words, acknowledge you have made mistakes, as we all have, and you have the opportunity of wiping them away in the eyes of the only one who matters – God.
2. Know who the gift giver is and why he gave you this gift.  Jesus died on the cross in a most brutal, tragic way.  He was blameless but allowed himself to die just as any other law-breaker would have.  He did this as if he were you and died for the mistakes you’ve made and will make in the future (because, let’s face it, we are human and will continue to mess up).  He literally took your place and died for your sins so you could be viewed by God as blameless if only you accept this to be truth.
3. Open the box, and start using the gift as it was intended to be used.  No one gives a gift they don’t want you to use, but they’ll never force you to use that blender you got for your birthday, right?  Ask Jesus to forgive you for the mistakes you’ve already made.  Tell him thank you for giving you this gift of forgiveness and allowing you to be viewed as blameless in his father’s eyes.  Tell him you want to receive this gift, and you’d like for him to come into your heart.  Have the true desire to do your best to continue each day not making mistakes, but understand that you aren’t perfect.  It’s only through accepting this gift that you will be forever forgiven for any future mistakes when you take them to God.  Even better. . . now with Jesus in your heart, you’ll find that some of those mistakes don’t come near as easy because you recognize them more quickly as being mistakes, and you’ll likely have a greater desire to do the right thing.

I would love to hear your story if for the first time you decided to accept this gift that’s been sitting in front of you.  If you haven’t yet . . . go ahead.  What do you have to lose?