Should Christians Marry Non-Christians?

2 Corinthians 6:14 starts out with, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?” This is a different subject to look at. Often I have this question asked of me when it comes to marriage. This section of scripture in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 goes so much more then just marriage, but it’s a tough question that I have had to look into with some couples I have talked to about marriage.

Years ago there was an article and lawsuit that dealt with this subject. There was a couple that was deeply in love and wanted to get married. The wife was Jewish and the husband was Catholic. The husband being so in love said, hey it’s the same God and he rarely went to church anyway so he converted. They got married and had a baby before the marriage hit the rocks. Soon divorce was inevitable.

As they were going through the divorce the husband started to go back to the Catholic Church. Soon pictures showed up with his child being baptized. The wife was ticked. She filed a lawsuit against him and tried to get him from being able from seeing his child because he promised to raise their child Jewish. What a mess and confusing situation. I never did find out the results of this story, but it happens from time to time. When two people don’t see things the same way, problems can happen. Now this scripture goes beyond a marriage.

This scripture goes into life with false apostles. There were people that were distracting Christians from serving and praising Jesus. Paul NEVER mentions that Christians shouldn’t associate with unbelievers. Christians interacting with people is an everyday aspect of life. What Paul brings up is if a person associates a lot with an unbeliever, it might mess with their devotion to Christ.

In this section Paul asked self-reflection questions about this in verses 14-16. This is to show there are some major differences that need to be address and looked upon. Paul end this section of scripture with talking about getting us to purify ourselves from contamination and trying to be holy out of respect to God and what he did through Jesus.

So when we look at the beginning question about marriage, there are some problems when looking at this subject. I prayed with some older ladies who are some of the most dedicated Christians I have ever met and there spouse won’t step foot in the Church. I have seen these ladies in tears and crying knowing at any moment one of them could pass away and they are not sure if the spouse will be in heaven. It’s tough and I don’t have an answer for that other then prayer.

In pre-martial counseling we look at this subject. We talk about how we want our kids to be raised and if problems could come up in this area. Would they have a problem if their kids were raised different then how they were? Communication must be key.

Just because someone is an unbeliever doesn’t mean they are an awful person. I have seen Non-Christian parents be loving, caring, great people and some of the best parents I have ever seen. I have seen marriages where the couple have been together like this and have great marriages. Some are the best marriage examples I have seen are from a couple like this.

Eternal life is the problem. If one of the people in the marriage is not Christian, they won’t both be in heaven. This is scary to me. To know people I love with all my heart might not be in heaven. I would hate to see that happen to a loving couple and I pray that people know Christ so they won’t have to deal with the problem that ensues. Each of us will have to face judgment one day and it’s going to be whether we accept Christ or not. I would hate for amazing couple to be separated for eternity.

Have a great day.

Good people can go to hell

There are plenty of good people that are headed for Hell. Maybe not today or tomorrow but later on down the road because of wrong ideas of what gets you to Heaven. I was going to be one of them.

I grew up Catholic and was made sure that we attended Church at least on Easter and Christmas (We did attend a lot more and I went to Catechism until fourth grade). After elementary school we attended church at everything from a Catholic church to a predominantly black pentecostal church. I knew who Jesus and God were but I gave up on Church mentally. I thought everyone was a hypocrite, lived one way on Sunday and different the rest of the week. I believed in Jesus, but didn't go much further then that.

I thought faith was so much more then believing in Jesus. I figured there was a scale that mattered. If I did more good deeds then bad deeds, not only would that show up the people that claimed faith, it would gain favor in the eyes of God. So in high school, I rarely drank, never smoked, never had sex and tried to be nice and a good person to everyone. I didn't think I had any enemies and never tried to make enemies. Certainly I was way ahead of some of my so called Christian friends that partied, tried to have sex with everyone, drank like a fish and smoked anything they could get their hands on. I was better then them. Man was I wrong.

God tells us this in Romans 10:1-4...
"Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.  For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes."

We can think we know what gets us to heaven, but it could be our own understanding. The Scripture above tells us the people of Israel at the time were zealous, "the God intoxicated people." They might have been for God but not for God. They thought they had their understanding of faith and it was not right. The majority of them did not believe in Christ. Therefore they thought the good things they were doing and the rules they were following (Obeying the 600+ rules God/Pharisees gave) were the way to live. They were wrong.

Faith in Jesus gets you to heaven and it's the only way. Israel did not submit to God and acknowledge who Jesus was. The result would be a tough pill to swallow at death, Hell. This is one of the biggest lies today and a lie I believed for a long time. Just because you are a good person doesn't mean you will go to heaven. If you think you are going to Heaven because you know of Jesus, shoot, the devil knew who Jesus was and what he did, yet he won't be in Heaven. A lot of peole in Israel missed this, but you don't have too.

A drinker, smoker and someone who had a ton of pre-martial sex changed my thinking on faith. This friend was a Christian and went to church every week when I didn't. He told me Church is about worshipping God and Jesus. Everyone who goes to Church is messed up in one way or another because we all sin. He told me God expects us to be perfect. I couldn't grasp this. We aren't perfect people I told him. Exactly he responded. He went on to tell me this is was Jesus did, he died on the Cross for you and your sins/mistakes, when you have faith in Jesus you accept who Jesus is as your personal Lord and Savior he covers the area you fall short and as a result you get to go to heaven. I remember telling them, "I'm a good person." He told me, "Not good enough."

It took a little while before this sank in. Finally on November 5, 2000. I finally got the point and was baptized. I realized something a lot of Israelites didn't, Jesus paid the price for my sins on the cross and he was my savior. He died for me. Recognizing this and having faith in him allowed me to go to Heaven. No matter what good things you have done, it's not good enough, God wants to see perfection when you have your one on one meeting with him after your earthly life ends.

Faith isn't about doing more good deeds then bad deeds, it's about a relationship with Jesus.  What is your relationship with Jesus? Who is he to you? Christ wants to take you in, but you have to make the decision. The ball is in your court, what are you going to do with it? If you never made that decision, find someone you can talk to about this. If you have friends that have struggled with this, maybe God intended you to be the person they would talk to about this.

Have a great day.

You think you’re right but you have been wrong plenty of times

Politics and I do not go in the same sentence.

It gives me a migraine looking at Facebook and everyone throwing your two cents into the political conversation.  Neither candidate is a saint nor are they the devil in human skin.  Yet I have seen everything in-between on Facebook and Twitter from both sides of the situation. When we think we have all the answers we can have none of the answers.

I pray Christians care more about keeping people from hell then this election.  We as humans do not have all the answers, nor will we ever.  Sometimes we can get stuck in-between a rock and a hard place.  Yet it’s still not as bad as Paul had it.

He was standing up for what he believed in and that was Jesus.  He believed in a resurrected Christ and lived his life for him.  You don’t read in the Bible about Christians voting in an election but you hear how they are put on trial for that faith.  Paul was on trial for a great chunk of time.

He was sent to Festus with his accusers.  His accusers were lying about him and saying he did stuff that wasn’t true.  Yet he faced politics.  Festus felt he owed the Jews a favor and tried to move the trial to Jerusalem. This could have been a death sentence to Paul.

Paul answered with this in Acts 25:10-11…

“I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried.  I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die.  But if the Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”

As a Roman citizen he had the right to appeal to Caesar with his case.  He knew the bad things that could happen in Jerusalem and went the other way.  Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in.  Paul believed in Jesus and was willing to stand trial for him.

Would you be willing to do the same for your faith?  Faith goes beyond who you vote for, it’s so much more.  If you are a Christian please think about someone who might be going to hell and try to show them the eternal life that Jesus offers. 

Have a great day.

Wearing your varsity jacket years after you graduate high school = living in the past

"You can't focus on the past to be the future."

This was a line I heard on ESPN radio coming into church today.

So much truth behind this.

If you want to do something in the future you can’t focus just on the past.

It's like wearing your varsity jacket years after graduating high school, nobody cares about what happened in your high school.

Sorry if you just found this out.

Does this mean the past doesn’t matter?

No.

I would say the past does matter.

There is a line, “When you forget the past you are destined to repeat it.”

If we don’t learn from the past we could make those same mistakes again.

Our church has been going through the Bible in a Year program as an entire Church.

This is usually the time when people that make this commitment give up on it.

It can be hard to learn from something you don’t understand and quit.

There is benefit behind studying this.

Paul knew this and he was able to sum up over 1,000 years in about 12 paragraphs in Acts 13:13-52.

He sums up going into slavery in Egypt and continues on to sum up the entire Bible until his time.

If you have never read the Bible, check this several chapter out for a little history.

This is pretty impressive.

One of the lines I love through this section is verses 39-40…

“There, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.  Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.”

Paul is talking to some people that know this history and others have no clue on the history of the world and the Bible.

He focuses on this part Jesus is the reason sins are forgiven.

I am guilty.

I am a sinner.

Anybody who knows me for longer than five minutes knows that I am a guilty sinner.

We all are.

Yet through Jesus and only through Jesus are sins are forgiven.

People grasp this section of scripture and comeback to Paul to hear more.

Many gave their lives to Christ.

Someone died for you.

They didn’t deserve it and face one of the worst deaths imaginable just for you, your sins and mistakes.

Jesus loves you.

He cares for you and wants you to have eternal life.

Life doesn’t end on earth.

It does go on for eternity.

The choice of where you get to spend eternity is up to you and your faith in Jesus or not.

There is no other way to heaven other than through Jesus.

I thank God for giving up his sons life for a sinner like me.

How about you?

You can’t focus on the past to be the future.

You can’t live in the past, but you can live on in the future.

Where do you want to live past this earthly life?

Have a great day.

Not making the cut

Picked over.

I remember back in high school trying out for the roller hockey team at our school.

I was going to try out for goalie, but dislocated my knee cap about a week early and it prevented me from bending my knee.

As a result, I went out for tryouts as a player.

I figured I was still solid enough to make it on the B team.

My high school had the A team and B team.

A team was pretty competitive with the other school in the conference and could compete, the b team was the opposite and usually lost most games 10-0.

I went into tryouts think I would be an easy pick for the B team.

My lack of ability to turn and move affect me and I did not make the team.

I was picked over.

I felt pretty crappy in the locker room.

Man, I didn’t even make it onto the b team, a team that lost most games 10-0.

I was feeling pretty down.

It doesn’t feel good to be picked over.

That was about a sports team, Jesus was picked over but this was life or death.

Jesus went before Pilate and they told the crowd, they could choose one person to not go to death, Jesus or Barabbas.

This is what was said about Barabbas in Mark 15:7…

“A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.”

Pilate said I can release the king of the Jews (Jesus) or Barabbas.

The crowd answered in John 18:40…

“They shouted back, “No, not him! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in a rebellion.”

Jesus was just picked over.

We can get picked over for jobs, schools, work and relationships.

Jesus was picked over for someone who took place in a rebellion.

His disciples and followers were not around and he was sentenced to death.

Jesus could have stopped this from happening but chose death.

He had the power and the ability to not be on the cross, but he accepted it and did this to die for each and every one of us.

Because he loved us, he made a sacrifice we would not have to make.

I would have loved to make that hockey team, but I did not.

I was sad about it, but not down.

The next year I joined with some other people that didn’t want to play for the school team and we beat the top school team 15-7.

That was a good feeling.

Now imagine the feeling you would get from someone dying for you.

A person literally gave his life up to die, so when you die, you could go to heaven.

Jesus did that for us.

He leaves us a choice.

Heaven or Hell?

We can chose where we want to go when we die.

We have to make a choice.

Believe in Jesus, believe he died on the cross for our sins and live or life for him.  When you die, you get to go to Heaven.

If we don’t choose this, we chose hell.

A place I wouldn’t want my worst enemy at.

We all have choices.

Some are small and some are huge.

I know some people that don’t believe in Jesus and have other ideas on the afterlife.

If you think you are going to heaven, how sure are you?

What if you are wrong?

Tough to think about.

Faith in Jesus is the only way to Heaven.

What’s your choice?

Have a great day.

Do you want to go to heaven?

Everyone has a chance to go to heaven when they make a decision to follow Christ.

Often the term used when making this decision as an adult is Born Again.

How could someone be born again?

This was a question I have heard multiple times and even a religious leader (Nicodemus) asked Jesus this question.

Jesus replied in John 3:7-8…

“You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus still didn’t understand.

Jesus goes on in verse 11…

“Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.”

He goes on and tells this in verse 16…

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Everyone has to make a decision to believe what Jesus did was true or false.

The one’s that believe receive eternal life.

I have heard many times, “I know I am going to hell.”

God did not come to tell us all the wrong we have done through Jesus.

He gives us life, hope, and forgives when we believe.

Jesus did not come to send people to hell.

He came to die for our sins, mistakes and whatever else we feel keeps us from going to heaven.

This is for everyone.

If you don’t believe this, you are worthy.

Jesus did this especially for you.

All you have to do is believe.

Believe Jesus is the Christ, son of the living God.

Accept him as your personal Lord and savior.

This is the first step towards eternal life.

It’s not rocket science.

Jesus tried not to make this complicated.

Do you want to go to heaven?

This decision is not made through being baptized as an infant.

You have to be old enough to make the decision for yourself.

Heaven is there for you.

The choice is yours whether you want to go to heaven or not.

It’s through this faith in Jesus.

Have a great day.