Working Your Way Out Of God

Revelation 3:5, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

I have noticed that with my ever-increasing age, the strength of my glasses has to be changed frequently. When I increase lens intensity, I can see things that I was missing. I believe it to be true of my spiritual eyes, as well. As I have gotten older, God keeps giving me new glasses with which I can see things previously unnoticed by me. With new spiritual glasses come many changes. I still shudder when I think of Bible School and wearing the glasses of superiority because of what I knew and disdain for the “ignorant” of God’s Word, which was constantly proclaimed. After all, we were becoming “Theologians.” With the glasses that I have had for some time, I see the folly of that and repent of it. To think that a man will “know” God!  My, it is so much nicer to bask in the beauty of the fact that I am known by God. Well, back to my present prescription. Jesus holds all things together (Colossians 1:15-17; John 1:1-3; Ephesians 4:6; Acts 17:28). He is the Life that holds all life together. We all exist in His Life; we are all connected to Him and totally dependent on Him for our existence. Therefore, we are in the Book of Life. The problem is that man lives by Him but refuses to recognize Him. What if God has given us seventy years (plus or minus) to either acknowledge He is our life or to work our way out of the Book of Life? Names are not put in the Book of Life but taken out. So if a man, held together by Life and in the Book of Life, refuses to acknowledge that Life, then with that attitude he is actually working his way out of Life during his lifetime. Finally, at death, that person gets the desire of his heart. All his years on earth were spent working his way out of Life, and now for eternity God gives what he wanted and fought for and removes his name from the Book of Life. I am amazed at how hard this type of man works to get out of Life. Jesus holds him together, and yet the man hates Him with a passion and is anti-Christ in all he does. He goes to the grave as a God hater. God, on the other hand, strives to keep him in Life; His sun shines on him, He provides for him, He heals him over and over, He blesses him, He sent His own Son for him, and yet the man wants away from Him, out of the Book of Life. God is doing His utmost to keep the man, who in turn is struggling to be free. Recognizing Jesus is so easy, and in so doing, one will never have his name taken out of the Book of Life. Working one’s way out of God is so, so, so very difficult. Amen.