(Part 3–Your Relationship with God)
This world is performance-oriented. So we also think that we need to do something to earn God’s favour and blessing. Though obeying God brings God’s blessing to us, our salvation does not depend on our doing something. Yet many people do not realize this.
They go for pilgrimage to various places, inflict pain on their bodies, they give money to charity; doing all these thinking that salvation comes by these activities. Some others trust in church traditions. But we need to understand that salvation is God’s gift to us. It cannot be earned by our works; i.e., doing something for God. We can only receive it with a thankful heart. Yes, your relationship with God began because God began it by gifting salvation to you. Thank God for it.
Again, the Bible clearly teaches us that we are saved by grace, not by works. What is this grace? It is God’s mercy and favour shown to us when we do not deserve it. The more we learn to appreciate our relationship with God, the more we start to realize how sinful we are. The more we become holy, the more we are given eyes to see the filth in our souls. It is then only that we understand that there is absolutely nothing good within us. What we are today is purely by God’s grace. Let us thank God for it.
But the great miracle is that God works in us to bring us to glory. This glory we will share with God in heaven one day. We all will be like Jesus Christ. Just as we all bear the human nature of Adam on earth, we all will share the likeness and glory of Jesus Christ in heaven. That is the meaning of eternal life. That means that the relationship we begin with God here on earth does not end with our death. Instead death means to a Christian, a change to glory. All the trials and difficulties we encounter in this life are transforming us to be fit to bear the glory that is going to be revealed in us. The change has already begun.