Posts Tagged With: bible study

Whether you’re just now coming to Christ, or just getting serious about it for the first time in a long time, you’ll find that God is always willing to join you on the starting line, but never content with letting you remain the way you are. Or the way you’ve been. Want to see some changes in your life? You’ve come to the right place.

How God Draws You to Himself

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. (John 6:35) 

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.  For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.  And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:37-40)

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)

… ” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” (John 6:64-65)

… “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you. (Jeremiah 31:3)

You may have felt like you were the one doing all the chasing. But God’s been after you a long time.

Calling your conversation experience a decision for Christ doesn’t begin to convey the truth of the matter. Yes, you made a decision based on your own free will. Yes, you were perfectly free to make a different choice than you did. But look at the whole thing on balance (from God’s perspective) and suddenly your decision to follow Jesus looks a lot less like a bold move on your part and a lot more like a stunning victory on His part. He fashioned everything there is about you in His own mind. He set you in a particular time and place. He’s been carefully arranging people, situations, and events in your life, waving His arms in front of your face, pleading with you to look back, to see the cross, to know the love that paid every last dime on your escalating debt of sins, to experience more freedom and joy and peace and contentment than you ever thought possible. Looks like your hardest decision was trying to say no all this time.

“How could the initiative lie on my side? If Shakespeare & Hamlet could ever meet, it must be Shakespeare’s doing.” – C.S. Lewis

Tomorrow’s Reading: Before you can get too far down the road of Christian living, you must first take a good, hard look at yourself. And see how you got into this shape to begin with.