AWARE

This post was written for Five Minute Friday

Word prompt--AWARE  

Five minutes to free write about it

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There are things I've missed out on because I wasn't aware they were happening until after the fact. There are benefits I didn't get to enjoy because I wasn't aware I was entitled to them.

Once upon a time, when I was young and deeply steeped in the occult and New Age, I thought I had finally found all the answers that had so long eluded me in my search for roots, purpose, and the meaning of life. I wasn't aware that I was wrong.

The doctrine of karma provided a perfectly plausible explanation of why the misfortunes in my life had happened to me and what lessons I needed to learn this time around; astrology offered answers to who I was and why I was here; and the Eastern path I became initiated into added the promise of a savior who would take me out of the cycle of reincarnation and lead me back to God. What more could I want or need? I had peace, I had joy, and I had confidence that I would be spending eternity with God. No one could have convinced me otherwise, not even the Christian acquaintance who did her best to witness to me. The more she told me I needed Jesus and that He was the only way to eternal life with God, the more pity and frustration I felt at her inability to understand that He was not.

I haven't been keeping track of the time, so probably my five minutes are over, but let me just end by saying that through a series of events that I've written about in my book SINCERELY WRONG: AN IMPROBABLE JOURNEY, the Lord did not leave me where I was. He opened my eyes and made me aware that what I believed was true had really been a lie. I'm so grateful He rescued me from out of the darkness, and set me on the right track.

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Excerpts copied from the AFTERWORD of my book:

Were I to see you headed [unaware] towards some imminent danger, such as a cavernous hole in the sidewalk, it would be unconscionable of me not to warn you about it, and I would not hesitate to do so, even yanking you aside if necessary. . . . Don't be deceived, as I was, into thinking that there are many paths to God, or that we get to Heaven by being good. Although we were created to have fellowship with the Lord, Adam and Eve's sin caused us to be born into a fallen world. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," and in Romans 6:23, that "the wages of sin is death." Because of sin, a vast gulf sepaates us from our Heavenly Father, and there is no way we can cross it through our own efforts. Only one path can lead us to eternal life, and that is Jesus, "The way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [Him]" (John 14:6).

The good news is that "God so loved the world [you and me included] that He gave His only begtten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). . . . This gift of salvation that is being anded to you can only be received by grace,hrough faith. I cannot be earned by good works (Ephesians 2:8-9), and as much as it is not God's will for anyone to perish, He will not impose His will on you or force you to accept it. The choice is yours.