Have you ever wanted a “do over”, something you wish you could go back in time and do differently, something that would have made things in your life turn out differently? This seems to be a common theme in many movies, such as “Back to the Future” and other movies of this genre. It is probably a question we have all asked ourselves at one time or another.
Well, as much as we like to fantasize about it, and as popular a theme as it is in novels and movies, there is no such thing as time travel. The idea doesn’t make sense if you think about it. We want to think about time travel in a very private, personal sense. We do not think about how crazy things would be if everyone, or even a lot of people had the ability to travel back and forth in time. Everything would be utter chaos if people were constantly going back and forth in time and changing things. The thing you went back in time to change could be completely undone by someone else who also went back in time with another agenda. The whole idea is utter nonsense. Thank God that the real world does not operate that way.
However, that does not negate our ability to have a “do over”. We must start with where we are right now and move forward in a different way (change directions). The Biblical word for this is repentance. Many people simply think the word repentance means to feel sorrow or remorse over wrongs we have committed or mistakes in judgement or decision that we have made. Granted, sorrow or remorse can and should lead to a change of direction. Without a course change, no repentance has occurred. We must realize that our sin is ultimately against God, our Creator. It can be against other people and ourselves, but it is ultimately against God.
We should also understand that mistakes and sin are not the same thing and stop using the words interchangeably as if they are. A mistake can be made if you are using faulty information, or if your understanding of something is flawed, or if you are just being careless. Sin, on the other hand, is a violation of God’s moral law, deliberate or unintentional. What is God’s moral law? Simply put, the Ten Commandments. I will get into that shortly.
We all struggle at some point in our lives with a set of basic questions that I believe are common to all people. How we answer these questions can either have good, life giving and beneficial results, or they can lead us into grave disappointment, disillusion and despair. We can choose to ignore these questions in our attempt to get on with life and not be bothered by them, or we can face them and seek answers. If we choose to stifle and ignore them, they seem to have a way of popping back up at some point in time, and troubling us, usually during times of crisis. What are some of these questions?
- What is the meaning of life? (The grand meaning, not just your personal meaning.) Why are we even here?
- Why do I exist? What is my purpose?
- How did all this begin? (Created by God or evolution, there aren’t really any other options presented to us. Evolution is taught in the public education system as if it is a proven fact when it absolutely is not. It is a theory. There is a mountain of evidence to refute evolution as it is traditionally taught, most people just chose to ignore it, or don’t care.)
- What do I believe to be true (not, what am I told to believe is true)?
- Why do I believe what I believe? (Have you really thought it through, or just assumed that because the so-called experts told you, it is true? Don’t be mentally lazy and just take what you are told for granted.)
- Is there any objective basis for what I believe, or is it just opinion?
- What (if anything) keeps me grounded when life gets difficult? What do I depend on? What is my anchor in the storms of life? News Flash: Drugs, alcohol, illicit sexual gratification, materialism, money, etc., are not life preservers, they are dead weight that will drag you down to the very bottom.
- Where is my life headed? What is in store for me in the future? Do I even have a plan for the future? What am I doing to achieve it?
- Why is there so much war, pain, suffering, death and evil in the world? The world is a beautiful place. Why do we destroy it with our foolishness?
- Why do I personally struggle with doing what my conscious tells me is right, and why do I choose instead to do evil? (Sin)
Here are some basic facts about life that we can’t change or ignore:
- We die. We are mortal (finite). We all know we are going to die. We just don’t know how or when. We don’t like to think about it. The mortality rate for human beings is 100%.
- We are born under circumstances and in situations over which we had no control. We did not choose to be born. We did not choose our parents. A specific biological man and a specific biological woman (married or unmarried), had sex and you were conceived. We are born in a specific time in history, a specific family, in a specific geographical place, a specific gender, a specific set of immutable characteristics that we can’t change. We had no say in any of this. (I am 5’6”. I can’t will myself to be 6’5”.)
- There are many things that affect us, either positively or negatively, over which we have no control. We may have been born into a relatively free society, or under a totalitarian government. We could have been born into a rich and affluent family, or a poor family living on welfare. We could have a great job that we love and then suddenly management can change, and totally wreck everything. (I speak from experience!) Unless we are very wealthy, we are slaves to the condition of the economy. Governmental policies can either make the economy good or bad. That is just a sad fact of reality. Many other things can be listed, but you get the point.
- Mankind has been engaged in futile war and murder ever since the beginning of time. Nations rise and fall. The cycle of destruction just continues over and over. Something is desperately wrong!
Many people search for the answers to these troubling questions through philosophy. Good philosophy can offer insight into some of these questions, but it does not offer ultimate and universal answers. That is because philosophy is based on the reasoning ability of finite man. If you adhere to an evolutionary worldview and believe that all of man’s thoughts are just the result of a biological organ we call the brain contained in our skulls, then, if you are being true to your belief in evolution, you can’t assume that any of man’s thoughts are dependable. If humans are in a state of evolutionary flux, at what point can we become sure that our thought processes are correct and true? Maybe we have not yet evolved to the point that our reasoning capabilities can be trusted. Obviously, I do not believe that, but it is something to ponder if you do consider yourself an advocate of evolution.
So where do we go for the answers to these questions? The perspective that the Bible gives us is that there is a grand reason for everything, and that reason originates with God, our Creator. He is our Creator, and He has reasons for everything He does. To make sense out of life we need to understand that in the end, it doesn’t matter what we think, or what our opinions are about anything. God runs His Creation, not us. He created us in His image, and He put us in charge of this planet for its care. We have done a very poor job so far, because of sin in the human heart that makes us greedy and selfish. If our actions and beliefs do not line up with what God says about what is His, we lose in the end, plain and simple.
Some would argue that the Bible is no different from other religious books that have existed throughout the course of time. Usually, the people making this claim have not taken the time to read the Bible, or the other religious books they use as a comparison. The Bible shows us the character of God in its entirety, other religious books do not. The Bible calls us to model God’s character as it has been revealed to us in the person we refer to as Jesus Christ in the English language. The Hebrew is Yeshua, so the pronunciation has been modified in different languages, but when we say “Jesus Christ” in the English, everyone knows who we are referring to. The words in the original language literally mean “Anointed (Christ) Savior (Yeshua)”. Jesus Christ was not his actual name in the sense that we understand names today. It is a title. He was called “Yeshua” which is the equivalent to our name “Joshua” which means “Savior”.
Consider the opening words of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The evolutionary equivalent is “In the beginning, some unknown and undefinable mass with no origin exploded, began to expand outward, and that is how everything came into being.” Utter nonsense. Common sense should inform us as we observe the real world that we live in, not some theoretical speculation. Things do not pop into existence out of nothing. Things must be made (created). For anything to be created, there must be a creator. You may ask, “Where did God come from?” That is an unanswerable question. The presumption of the Bible, and the answer that is stated in many places is that God never began. He is eternal. We can’t grasp that because we live in space and time. He does not. If you prefer to believe in evolution, there is no answer there. Where did the material for the Big Bang come from? Either way, you are starting with a question you can’t answer.
The majesty of the earth and the universe, as far as we can know it, all the millions of intricate life forms, the complexity of things on the molecular level the sub-atomic level, the complexity of life forms in the ocean, the complexity and wonder of your own body, all declares the glory and the majesty of the Creator. (Psalm 19:1-4). To attribute the majesty and wonder of God’s magnificent creation to blind, random evolutionary chance is the height of arrogance and ignorance. Random chance and chaos do not evolve into beauty and order. This does not happen with anything in the real world in which we currently live. Why would we attribute such nonsense to the origin of all things? Travel to Europe and view some of the magnificent, centuries old cathedrals, go to some renowned art museums and view the works of the great masters, listen to a well-rehearsed symphony orchestra, and then tell me what fool would attribute any of this to random chance. Why do we think differently about our world just because we call it nature? There is no such thing as nature that exists as an entity in and of itself. It obviously has the earmarks of a Creator. That is just common sense, despite all the asinine rhetoric of men such as Richard Dawson that go to exorbitant lengths to speculate and theorize about how these things can be, and then have the audacity to teach such things as if they are proven facts, when none of it can be substantiated with verifiable data. Such men did not even exist for more than a lifespan of 80 or 90 years at best. They can’t possibly know what happened in the past, thousands of years ago.
The Bible paints a picture for us of a God who is good, benevolent, merciful, just and fair, unlike the tyrannical and warlike gods of mythology. God’s desire is for the ultimate good of the people that He has created in His own image, to rule and maintain the world that He created for us. I say “ultimate” good because in this current world’s system of things, the rule of which man has given over to Satan, by disobeying God, all things do not currently seem good. Ultimate good and what seems to be good or bad at this present time are not the same thing. I am reminded of the words from John 16:21:
“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.”
The “ultimate” good is the birth of a child who brings joy to the parents. The situation for the mother does not seem good when she is in the agony of labor!
I am also reminded of Hebrews 12:1-3:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
The Bible also paints a picture for us of God’s creation that is good, life-giving and meaningful, as opposed to the evolutionist’s picture of a hostile, random and chaotic world and cosmos subject to the blind forces of chance, with no meaning, doomed, as they speculate, to eventually implode.
“God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)
“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
God is immortal (eternal). He exists outside of space and time. He created space and time, but He is not bound by it as we are. As beings created in His image, we were also created to be immortal, but something went terribly wrong. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought the sentence of death on the whole human race (their offspring.)
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:15-17)
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
God’s creation is governed by His moral law which can’t be changed. God’s governance of His creation is not like the governments of man, the laws of which can be changed. God’s moral law is the standard by which we are judged. Would you rather live in a world where there are no laws, where everyone is free to do what-ever they want, with no consequences, (anarchy), or a world where things are regulated by just and fair laws? I think most rational and same people would prefer the latter. The essence of God’s moral law is contained in the Ten Commandments. Let’s consider them briefly:
- You shall have no other gods before Me. In ancient times, more so than now, people worshipped what they called “gods”, which were pagan idols. In some parts of the world, people still do this, but not so much. As this applies to us, your “god” is whatever is of primary importance to you, whatever, or whoever it is. This can be money, fame, sex, power and control, it can even be your mate or your children, things that are not necessarily bad in themselves, but if they are more important than the Living God, you are making an idol out of whatever or whoever it is. Since God created us, and gives us life, He should be of upmost importance to us. Nothing can come before Him.
- You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. This one is a bit lengthy. Some translations would shorten it with merely, “Don’t make idols”, but is it a bit more involved than that. The reason that this is an abomination to God is because God is infinite and outside our realm of space and time. God can’t be represented as any kind of image, and if we are creating images to represent something else we acknowledge as our “god”, then we are insulting the Living God who made us. The Scripture says “No man has seen God at any time…” (John 1:16) This means that no one is capable of seeing God in His entirety in His infinite state. God has revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God in human flesh. In Christ, we can see all of God and His character that He permits us to see. It is all that we need to know. The other, more subtle and insidious way of creating an idol is to make up a version of God in your own mind that is based on your opinion and wants that is not based on Biblical truth. When people say things like “My god is not like that” without being able to substantiate it with Scripture, what they really mean is, “The version of God I have created for myself is not like that.”
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Another translation reads: You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. This involves more than using God’s name in a curse, although it certainly does involve that. It involves any use of the name or reference to God in a flippant manner, such as the common expression “OMG” (Oh My God) as is common on social media and elsewhere. This is referencing God in a trifle or flippant manner, and the ironic thing is that it is usually done be people who profess to not believe in God. It is not showing respect for the holy God who created you. The ancient Israelites would not even say the name of God for fear of being irreverent. They represented it as what is the equivalent in our language as YHVH, which we often pronounce as “Yahweh”, but they did not say that. They would not even dare utter it. The irony of the use of the expression “God d*** it” by people who profess to not believe in God is idiotic because they are asking a God that they profess to not believe in to damn something. I shutter to think that a professing believer would be foolish enough to utter those words.
- Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. This is based on Genesis 2:2-3: “By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating He had done.” This does not mean that God got tired and needed to take a break, as we do, for the Scripture also says, “indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4) What we need to understand is that God is setting the pattern for us to follow here. There are two elements to the Sabbath, or The Lord’s Day as we call it. First, it says God rested, so He is directing us to rest. Spiritually, mentally and physically, we need a down day, a day of rest. We can’t work all the time, or we will burn ourselves out. That is just common sense. God knows this. The second element of the Lord’s Day is corporate worship. We should worship God every day in our private lives, but we need to go to church to hear God’s word with like-minded people, our brothers and sisters in Christ. People will say things such as ”I don’t need to go to church to worship God. I can worship God on the golf course, or I can worship God by walking in the park.” Well, you certainly can, and should, but that does not mean you get a pass from corporate worship, because the Scripture also says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25) People who argue over whether we should observe the Sabbath (The Lord’s Day) on Saturday, (such as the Seventh Day Adventists) or Sunday miss the point. Mostly churches meet on Sunday, so just go to church and worship on Sunday and don’t argue over semantics. The Pharisees of Jesus’s day made the Sabbath overly burdensome, and He rebuked them for this: One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:23-28). In other words, the Pharisees condemned the disciples for eating on Sunday, and doing a little bit of work to get the food ready to eat (they picked the grain!) Don’t stress out if you need to cook Sunday lunch, you are not sinning, just get a good nap after you get your belly full!
- Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. We live in a culture that has significantly veered of the path of honoring our parents. I think it is significant that God indicates that by honoring our parents, our lives will be prolonged. Obviously, this is not a hard and fast “rule” but is a general beneficial principle just as exercising and eating a proper diet is more beneficial but is no guarantee that you may not contract some ailment that can kill you. Your mother’s face is the first face you see after you are born, and her voice is the first voice you hear. Under normal circumstances, your father is (or should be) the next person you meet. They are (or should be) the two primary influencers on you in your early years. Sadly, there are many parents who do not “deserve” to be honored. Many babies are born out of wedlock, and the child may not even know who their biological father is, or if they do, their father may not be involved in their lives at all. Many mothers choose to give their child up for adoption and never bond with their child at all. We could say in these situations that the parents do not “deserve” to be honored. My own father was a womanizing alcoholic. My parents divorced when I was 10 years old, and my father died six years later at the age of 40. For many years as a child, I felt like I hated my father. I felt like he did not deserve to be honored. At the time I did not mourn his death. I felt like it was a relief. That happened when I was 16 years old. However, 8 years later when I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ, and He replaced my heart of stone for a heart of flesh, I mourned my father’s passing, as I saw a life that could have been truly valuable that was wasted. God enabled me to honor my father after his passing. God tells us to honor our parents because it is the right thing to do, not because they deserve it. There are many other places in Scripture where we are commanded to honor and obey those in positions of authority over us, whether we feel they deserve it or not. God does not call us to be anarchists, but to live peaceably with all, as much as it is in our power to do so.
- You shall not murder. Notice the commandment says “murder” and not “kill”. Murder is the intentional, premeditated killing of another person. It is done with malice, not accidentally. That is why cities of refuge are described in the Old Testament, where someone who accidentally killed someone could flee for protection from the “avenger of blood”, a friend or family member who would come to kill him. That is why our law makes a distinction between murder and manslaughter.
- You shall not commit adultery. God’s pattern is for one man and one woman to wed for life and be fruitful and multiply. This is the basis for the family, the basic structure for all society. “The two become one flesh.” This is a bond between a husband and a wife that is unlike any other relationship humans are involved in. It is not to be entered into lightly. All sexual relationships outside of the context of heterosexual, monogamous marriage is sin, period!
- You shall not steal. This one is simple and should not require a lengthy explanation. Stealing is the taking of anything that does not belong to you. People steal, governments steal, people are cheated in many ways. It is abhorrent to God.
- You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Simply put, Do Not Lie! According to Jesus, your neighbor is anyone you come in contract with. We live in a world that is awash in lies from the media, from government, from the school systems, etc. Live not by lies, expose them!
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Coveting simply means to envy what someone else has. It is the desire to take it away from them so you can have it.
There are many more laws in the Old Testament, but this is the moral law. These are the most fundamental and basic laws of God that govern the moral order of His creation. We break them to our peril. This is our starting point, no matter the time, social or historical context. These laws apply to everyone. Whether you believe them or accept them or not, you will be judged by them. A lot of the other laws are ceremonial laws and civil laws that applied to Israel at that. We can learn much from them, and should respect and appreciate their significance, but they are not in the same category as the moral law (10 commandments), which apply to all times.
Before the moral law was given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, there was the one original commandment given to Adam and Eve: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) In other words, “obey Me”. If you rightly understand that God is the source of all good, there is never any reason to disobey Him. The problem is not with God, the problem is with our will, what we desire. To desire anything outside of what the good Creator permits is to shut yourself off from the source of all good and life: God. This is living death that ends in real death.
In eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve had decided for themselves to determine what was right and wrong. The majority of people on the planet have been doing that ever since the beginning of time. That, in a nutshell, is the crux of all human sin. We choose to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. Pride. “My truth, your truth” means NO TRUTH. The only truth is God’s truth. Most people in our society who are not Biblically literate don’t realize they are violating God’s moral law, even though God has written it into our conscience. We instructively know it is right. The Apostle Paul has much to say about this in the first couple of chapters in the book of Romans. I strongly advise you to read this, if you haven’t already.
Our world is a fast moving and increasingly more dangerous place today. Technology has given mankind the ability to end all human life on this planet and destroy all life, if not for the intervening hand of God. Most people can sense this to some degree. It is hard to make sense out of many things that are happening in the world. The level of corruption in government and the media and the perversity of mankind seems to be increasing at an alarming rate. Evil is a very real spiritual force in the world that can’t be ignored.
We need answers to the deep questions of life. The Bible gives us the answers we seek. The overarching theme of the Bible puts things in their proper perspective. Our society ignores the significance and relevance of the Bible at it’s own peril. We will see that in the end, all who align themselves with truth and righteousness win. Those who are ensnared in the wickedness of this world’s sin meet their end in horrible and eternal damnation.
When we compare our individual lives to God’s moral law enshrined in the 10 commandments, we see we are all guilty and have failed miserably. We too, have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We want to decide for ourselves what our standard of morality, right and wrong is. All our standards are subjective, based on our own opinions, not any objective, absolute standard. We stand judged and are pronounced guilty by our righteous and holy Creator, the one who gives us our very lives. Nothing in all creation can give life. Only God, the author of life, can give life. Remember God told Adam and Eve if they ate from the forbidden tree they would die. Obviously, they did not immediately fall over dead physically. Adam lived to be over 900 years old. But the process of death was set in motion in that act. First, they died spiritually. They lost the presence of God. Death was passed onto their offspring (you and me.) The judgement of death was passed to all mankind because we are all descendants of Adam. Adam and Eve “reproduced” after their own kind. Everything living reproduces after its own kind. Our “kind” was corrupted. Adam and Eve, and subsequently all mankind was created to become immortal beings, but they forfeited their immortality (and ours) for mortality by willingly disobeying God’s first command.
All throughout the prophesies of the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis 3, God promises a coming deliverer (Messiah) who would break the power of sin and death over mankind. Genesis 3:14-15:
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Jesus Christ was that promised deliverer. He was conceived in a supernatural way, born of a virgin, with no biological father. Jesus Christ was not His name. It is a title. He was probably called Yeshua, which is the equivalent of our name Joshua. Yeshua means “Savior”. Christ means “Anointed”, so Jesus Christ literally means “Anointed Savior”. The seed of Adam’s sin was not passed on to Him. Jesus was the incarnation of Yahweh, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Jesus, an innocent man, was crucified on a Roman cross for made up charges, buried, and resurrected from the dead three days later. In Christ, God paid the penalty of our sin for us. He literally died in our place. The Scripture says “The wages of sin is death.” We gain the benefit of that payment when we repent of our sins and ask God to forgive us of our sins because of the payment He made for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Most people alive today have heard that message presented to them at some point. Most people choose to ignore it because they want to remain in their sin, which is the path to destruction, cast away from the presence of all good, and the good, holy, righteous and loving Creator who gave them life. You do not have to be one of those people. If you were offered a key to unlock everything in life that is good, right and true, (not everything you “want”), would you take that key? I am offering you that key right now. We all make the decision for ourselves, and in the end, have no one else to blame but ourselves for winding up in hell. Salvation is a two-step process: Repentance, intentionally turning away from what you know to be evil and wrong, and Belief and Faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. It is that simple. Romans 10:8-10 says: “The Word is near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith we are proclaiming, that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you WILL BE saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
Becoming a spiritual child of God is not a promise that your life will be a smooth ride. It may not be. That is the mistake a lot of people make, thinking God will make all their problems go away. He never promises to do that. He does promise to give us the Holy Spirit who will never leave us or forsake us, and in that, we have a power to be comforted in, and overcome life’s challenges in a different way. You are going to have problems, heartaches, pain, and all kinds of challenges in life regardless of whether you are a child of God or not. Abandoning your faith in God because He does not magically take away all your problems is foolishness. Preachers who preach that God will give you a good life right now, in the way the world thinks of a good life, wealth, happiness, health, power and influence, are heretics and are NOT preaching the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ, by grace through faith.
You do not have to be one of the many people on the road to damnation, eternally cast away from the presence of a good Creator. If you are not in the habit of praying, consider using the following prayer as an example. You do not need to use my exact words but express something similar with the basic core truth. It is the sincerity of the heart that matters to God, not your exact wording:
“Lord, I know that my life was given to me by You. My life is a privilege and I want to be saved. You alone have the power over life and death. I know You are the final judge of all mankind, and You are the final judge of me. I confess that I have broken Your moral law many times. I have treated all of this life’s blessings with contempt and have tried to have my own way and have failed. I now know that I am in danger of judgement and being cast away from Your presence. I do not want that to happen. Please forgive me of my sins, not because I deserve to be forgiven, but because of the blood of Your son, Jesus Christ, that was shed on the cross at Calvary for my forgiveness. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and will confess that openly and publicly, regardless of what other people may think about me. It doesn’t matter what people think about me or say about me. What You say matters, and You have told us this in Your Word. According to Your Word, which can not lie, accept me as Your child from this day forward, and help me, by the Power of Your Holy Spirit, which You have promised to give us forever, to live day by day for the rest of my life to serve and obey You and You only. I ask this in the precious name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, Yeshua, Your Anointed Savior of mankind. Amen”
Danny's Stump 