My seven-year-old loves to play video games. He loves to spend his time trying to build on Minecraft ,and conquer the enemies of Halo or whatever other video game he is trying to win against. One thing that my seven-year-old has already learned about science is that the quickest destination between two points is a straight line. Logically for him when he's ready to play video games what he should do is to move directly to the Xbox or the computer and begin playing with no regards to what time it is, what he needs to do, if he's brushed his teeth, if he's fully clothed... you get the point. He gets very upset sometimes when I ask him to do mundane things like eat dinner or get dressed or feed the dog before he plays video games. I have to remind him though that his happiness is important to me. I don't interrupt his journey to fun merely out of spite. I tell him that because I love him I require that he sacrifices some of his time to do things that are important so that he grows up healthy and well rounded.
I have a 14-year-old that is in a similar situation with a different issue. He doesn't see the value in saving money. He recently went through eighth grade promotion and so now he's got a good sum of money burning a hole in his pocket. You can only imagine the amount of eye-rolling in deep sighs I received when I required him to deposit a good portion of that money into his savings account. He has learned the lesson of science and travel very well too. He has money in his pocket, there are things that he wants, he has the money so obviously to him the thing to do is to go and buy the things that he want right now. I find comical similarities of talking to my teenage son and saving money, and talking to grown adults about the importance of faith in their life.
Whenever I talk about spirituality, religion or faith to any of my peers I often hear comments in regards like, "God just is a buncha rules! God just doesn't want me to have fun! God just wants to have all my money!" Immediately when I hear these comments I see the picture of my teenage son with his disappointed face when I try to explain to him why it's better to put money in his savings account than to go out and buy all the Pokémon cards he possibly can with the money in his pocket. One thing I've learned in this life is true, that life is short. With all that I see in the media and the news today I have learned that you will never know when it is your time to go.
Like saving for retirement many think, "Oh yes that is important I'll start on that next week. I have things though that I really want right now." Problem is next week there's something else just as important. The delay of starting to save for retirement gets put off week after week.
God, faith,religion, spirituality are treated the same way.
"Oh yeah that God thing! Yeah, I want to go to heaven. That's important, but I have so much to do right now. I can't make it this Sunday. I'll do it next week, yeah."
However next week comes and there something more important again, a game to go see, a party to go to, a beautiful day that just begs to be relished. Know this, one day you will die. You'll die and your soul will no longer have a home. It will need some place to go.
This is the part where some people will get angry and they will say things like,"If God was really about love he would realize I'm a good person and he would let me in anyway."
The fact is God is more like you, than you think. God loves all indeed, he truly does, but he only wants to let those whom he knows into his house. Heaven is Gods eternal home. He created it for himself and for you. He wants you to be there, but let me ask you this, how many people, how many homeless people are you willing to invite into your home which you do not know?
Right now are you willing to get up, leave your home and go out into the street and take a homeless person by the hand whom you do not know and invite them into your home? I know that at this point there are some who are scoffing. I know that there are those who say I'm ridiculous. Seriously I would not have one problem inviting a homeless person into my home, but I would want to know them. I would want to get to know them. I would want to make sure that me and said homeless persons would have an understanding in that while I would welcome them into my home with love, that they would have respect for what's mine in how things were to be in my home.
God is the same way. God wants to invite you into his home. He wants you in heaven. He loves you but he also wants a relationship with you. He wants to have an understanding with you. Trust me the last thing God wants is to invite a bunch of people into heaven and then have them tear up the place because they don't have the same vision of what Heaven should be as he does. And Heaven is his home, it's his place he created it. It's his, so of course he's not going to just let anyone in and destroy his home because there's a misunderstanding of what you and what he thinks heaven should be.
God his already been through this before. One of his most beautiful angels and a third of the angels that chose to follow him, were kicked out of heaven. You probably know him by name, Satan. Being a father is who's brought life into this world, I can only imagine the buckets of tears God shed when he had to kick a third of his angels ,which he made out of love, out of heaven. I am sure that God never wants to have to do that again, I know I wouldn't want to, so God has rules. The most beautiful thing God ever did for you, for me and everyone else was that he gave us free will.
We get to choose.
God lets us do whatever we want. Now if we want to go to heaven, yeah we got to play by his rules, but if we decide we want to do it our way then we have to pay the consequences. This is the part where some people will think or say, "Yeah but my way is not that bad." Problem is when we start doing "my will" instead of God's will selfishness creeps in. Selfishness takes over. Selfishness is not love, and Heaven is where perfect love resides.
At this point some of you may be thinking, "Well I can't make it to heaven. I'm not perfect.", and you're right you can't make it. Nobody can find their way into Heaven. I mean Heaven is so amazing, it's so beautiful, it's so wonderful, it's so perfect there's nothing you could do on this planet to earn admission into heaven.
But that's the cool part, you don't have to earn your way into heaven. You have to love your way in. I'll tell you right now being a father, my children are in my home because I love them, and after they reach that adult age when there out on there own, they will be welcome back into my home if they love me. I want my home to be filled with love, so I'm not going to allow people into my home who are going to bring in hearts filled with spite anger and rage and just emotionally trash the joint.
God's the same way. God wants Heaven to be filled with love. In heaven there is perfect love. First he wants to love you. God wants to build a relationship with you. Because he loves you he wants to teach you the most perfect beautiful way to love. Will you make mistakes? Yes, but that's OK God doesn't expect you to be perfect. He knows you're not perfect. It's because he loves you that he's willing to take the time, he's willing to be patient. Because he loves you and he knows how awesome you are, he wants to teach you so that you can become the best you possibly can be. Then when your best buds with God and his son Jesus and you hang out with the Holy Spirit out of true desire he will be ready for you to come home to the paradise he made for you called Heaven, if you choose that's what you want to do.
So...
You don't have to be rich, God has a paradise waiting for you.
If you have a relationship with God that's tight and you are sad, God will be there and he will take care of you. and he will lift you up.
If you were willing to castaway selfishness and have no problem being meek God will shower you with gifts of love.
If you desire to be right and true God will provide you with the answers.
If you decide to be merciful, to live a life of mercy, to show mercy to all those who are in need, God will shower you in mercy.
If you live your life following the Commandments of God, and when you make mistakes, with all your heart ask for forgiveness, and love God and put love into this world you will see God in Heaven.
If you work to bring God's version of peace on this earth you will see God in heaven.
If you walk through this life and you are persecuted because you follow God you will be blessed. God will love you and you will spend eternity in heaven specially blessed.
If people lie about you, spit on you, mock you, kill you because you stand up for the word and the love of God, God will specially bless you and you will find special treasure in heaven. God will not forget.
God will reward you. Just like God has specially rewarded all the prophets that have come before you and who tried to help His people who have been killed because of God and his love and his word.
So maybe you're wondering, "How do I get started?" If you're at step zero and God is not in your life at all talk to him. That's all you got to do. Prayer is just like talking. Pray to God and ask that he come into your life. Pray to God tell him you want to relationship with him and his son and the Holy Spirit. Next step go to church this might be weird. Ask that person at work or at school or whatever who you know has faith in God to take you to church. I find going to church for the first time helpful if you go with somebody you know. If you don't know somebody just go. I've had people tell me that when they tried going to church for the first time they were treated poorly, don't sweat this. If you meet Christians that are rude remember Christians aren't perfect. Christians make mistakes to. Know this, Satan will tempt you to not have a relationship with God. Satan is great at putting up obstacles so that you do not want to go to church. Satan doesn't want you to build a loving relationship with God. Satan wants you to live a life without faith so that you can come hang out with him in hell, so he can make every single one of your worst nightmares a reality for eternity. Don't fall for Satan's trap. Find a church that makes you feel like you are home away from home. Once you find a church that fits you, speak with your pastor or your priest, let them guide you and educate you, so that you can make the most of your relationship with God. One of the things that you will do is that you will be baptized. If you have never been baptized and you go to a Christian church and they do not want to baptize you, find a new church, getting baptized is huge! It's a requirement.
Most importantly though as you proceed with your journey in developing an awesome relationship with God Jesus and the Holy Spirit remember to breathe. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Remember God is love. Jesus is love. The holy spirit is love. They love you and they want to spend eternity with you. So relax, pray, lay it all out there for God. Pray to Jesus, tell him how you feel. If your mad, tell him. Being mad isn't a sin. Tell him if you're mad, you're sad or you're happy. He wants to share everything with you because he loves you.
Go to church, go to church every Sunday. People balk at this one, but I'll tell you going to church is like having the most awesome support group ever. That's why you want to make sure that you find a church that makes you feel like you're at home. Go to church and listen and learn. Before the service starts pray to God. Pray to the Holy Spirit ask them to show you one thing to take away from that service. It could be something in one of the, hymns or one of the scripture readings, something from the homily or the sermon something will strike you. My best advice, and I know this will sound really geeky, but take pen and paper with you. Take notes and if something strikes you write it down. Become active in the church that you choose donate your time. The more you hang out with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the fellow members of your church the more you will feel filled with love and the happier you will be. Now you don't want to sacrifice your other important relationships. If you have children you want to make sure that you still care for them and their needs. You don't want to neglect your responsibilities at work because you're spending all your time at church. God doesn't want you neglecting any of your responsibilities. If you're married and you have a wife or a husband your newfound zeal may come as a shock to them. Not everyone is at the same place in their faith journey at the same time, so remember be like Jesus and love your way through everything.
As you go out into the real world, the world that is cold and focused on selfishness, remember Jesus is your role model. I highly recommend reading the Bible every day. What I like to personally read is the Gospels. They're very easy to digest just easy to understand and can do wonders for you as you negotiate through your day. As you journey through your every day life and you feel sin trying to tempt you look to Jesus. Pray to Jesus. Use Jesus, who is your role model on how to deal with difficult people and difficult situations.
All these things and more will help you to develop a wonderful rich relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And just like with anyone else when you have a good relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit you will bear fruit from that relationship. The better your relationship gets with them the more peace, serenity and happiness you will feel in day-to-day life no matter what gets thrown at you. You will find yourself journeying closer and closer to heaven. Because really that is the goal, in being a Christian, you are to become a saint and reside in heaven.
Your time here is short how, do you choose to spend it? What's your retirement plan? What and how much are you willing to sacrifice, and for what? God loves you and he's waiting for you. Now you get to choose, but be careful don't delay. Today is the day you get to start planning for eternity.
Gospel MT 5:1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.
Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
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