A message to those who don't know God

I have been pondering this lately and I thought it would be important to to mention this urgent message. If you want to call me a condescending person I feel nothing but sorrow for all of you and the misery that will await you if you do not heed the message that I am about to give you. I pray that I will have immense anguish at the thought of your eternity without God (Romans 9:1-5) and I know that you know He exists!! (Romans 1:18-24) I desire that you at least consider reading what I am about to write. The first thing that I want to say is that I know that you are all seeking self-fufillment, happiness, and satisfaction. You want a joy that will never ever end, and will never fade even in the deepest possible pain. And I know for a fact that you are desiring it and you are searching hard for it in every place that you go. You are looking for it in hobbies, people, spouse, material things, and anything that you can imagine. This pursuit of joy is something that is built-in in your nature. And this pursuit of happiness is not someting that is evil in and of itself. God placed it in you when He formed you in your mother's womb. (Psalm 139:13-14) And I want to say that you won't find it in any other place except in God alone. And now this leads into my talk about who God is and how He alone can satisfy. The first thing that I desire to talk about is the majestic beauty of God. This means that God is so amazingly wonderful to the eyes that to see it in all of it's glory will lead to everlasting happiness forevermore. (Psalm 27:4-5, 73:25-26). This beauty is majestic, that is it is amazing wonderful beauty that outshines the glories of heaven itself. And God's beauty will cause great awe, amazement and wonder to those see it in Christ Jesus!! And even more stunning, God's beauty is holy, that is it is a beauty like no other that is ever seen. The holiness of God is the fact that there is NO ONE like Him. He alone is eternal, self-existent, infinite, and indescribable beauty. And so I just want to paint as accurate a depiction of who God is as I possibly can. And now the next thing that I want to talk about is the righteouessness of God. I fear that many of you will be turned off by this attribute of God because all it can do is give you what you deserve for your rejection of God.... eternal wrath in the lake of fire. But I have good news for you, that is not ALL it does. I have seen in Scripture that the righteouessness seems to be the foundation for God's acts of grace and mercy. Many people in the Bible have appealed to God's righteouessness for grace and mercy. (Psalm 119:140, 143:11) And so I now want to define what the righteouessness of God is. This moral nature of God means that God is UNSWERVINGLY committed to glorifying His nature in all that He does. I believe that this is the reason why God delays His wrath (Jeremaih 14:21, Isaiah 48:9-11, Psalm 106:6-8) and also why God saved me through my faith in His Son alone (Psalm 25:11, 1 John 2:12) It was not because I deserved it (I don't) but because of God's righteouessness: His unswerving committment to glorify His beauty in all that He does. Now what does it mean for God to glorify Himself in all that He does??? I feel that Ephesians 2:4-7 is the best Scripture that explains it to me. Verses 4-6 say that: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, So this illustrates regeneration (imparting of eternal life) and adoption into the kingdom of God. Now verse 7 makes the reason crystal clear. so that in the ages to come He might SHOW THE SURPASSING RICHES of His GRACE in KINDNESS toward us in Christ Jesus. Here is another awesome verse about that demonstrates God's unwavering passion to reflec His amazing grace: 1 Timothy 1:15-17 says that It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for THIS REASON I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might DEMONSTRATE HIS PERFECT PATIENCE as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be HONORED and GLORIFIED forever and ever. Amen. I have now shown you two amazing verses that explains the reasons behind God's merciful and gracious dealings with men. He will not let the glory of His beauty and grace be tarnished. Now I can imagine an objection coming up to all of this when I talk about this. It is ok because I struggled with the same thing. How can it be a loving act of God for Him to desire to glorify Himself in all things and to get men to praise and display Him. Here are two anticipated objections to this. 1.Is He just some insecure little child who can't live without the admiration and praise of other people??? 2.Is He just some selfish megalomaniac who doesn't care who He has to hurt in order to gain as much praise as possible?? I pray that I can show that God's unswerving committment to upholding the glory of His beauty and His love for us are one and the same thing by the end of this discussion Response to Question 1 Well in order for God to be God, He must be the First Cause of all created things. He furthermore must have had eternal existence before even time began. That is why God is known as the name "I AM WHAT I AM" (Exodus 3:14) And it will certainly mean that God has absolutely NO deficiencies (Acts 17:24, Romans 11:33-36) that He needs to take care of. He is perfect joy and happiness and He delights infinitely in the glory of His Son in human form, Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:4-6, John 17:24, Colossians 2:9, Hebrews 1:3) It cannot be that He has some insecurity and He is depedent on some outside being in order to complete His happiness as He would have been just as glorious if He didn't create anything. Response to Question 2 (I thank Louie Giglio for his help in my embracing of God's passion for His glory) Is God selfish in wanting to be glorified and worshipped in all that He does. No He is just being God. If He is God He knows that He is the most beautiful, loving, amazing, wonderful, all satisfying, all-sufficient, Good above all other things that exist. And if He knows that and He allows people, people that He claims that He loves to turn their hearts affections towards anything else (less than the very best), not only is He committing idolatry but He is no longer a loving God because for Him allow them to pursue their pleasure any other beauty (and therefore ruining their souls) would be pure hatred. If you fail to worship God, God will just be God and will still glorify Himself regardless. And you on the other hand will miss out on knowing, savoring and praising the most beautiful being in the entire universe, which will be your everlasting loss. So lets get rhetorical again. What should God give you if He were to love you infinitely. HIMSELF right??? Paul says that through the Spirit in Christ we have direct access to the FATHER (Ephesians 2:18) and Peter says that the very reason that Christ died was to bring us to GOD!! (1 Peter 3:18) Read the Psalms if you want to see hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and joy in God. Now what do we do when we are filled with infinite joy??? We praise and admire and worship it because this is the only way that our pleasure if going to be made full!!! We can't help but express joy in worship because that is the highest happiness!!! And so when God demands your worship, He is not doing it for Himself (as if He needed it to attain a happiness He does not have). Rather He is doing it for you, your benefit, and your highest happiness that can be found in Him alone. And God is being loving when He does this and not selfish. CS Lewis put it wonderfully!! I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are, the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. This is the grand and glorious gospel of God. That He is all righteoues and all loving and these two are really if you think about it two sides of the same coin. His righteouessness, that is highest passion for the full display of His glory, and His love for us, His passion for our highest happiness intersect perfectly!! God loves you and your happiness in Himself infinitely and suprememly and that is the glorious message of the cross!! So what is the cross all about!!! Well all people have sinned and what that means is that we have all rejected God (Romans 3:9-20, 23, Psalm 51:5) And that is evident by the way we live our lives. The essence of sin is not sex but rather rejecting God's love and your everlasting happiness and then pursuing your pleasure in something that can't satisfy!! (Jeremiah 2:11-13, Romans 1:21-25) And this completely affects the way that we live our lives towards other people. The problem is not so much our outward behavior but the idols of our heart. And because we have a sinful nature thanks to Adam's sin.... we are unable to accept God's love and happiness and our driven towards idols. Therefore God's wrath is now against us and we are doomed.... unless a miracle happens. And so because God infinitely loved us and infinitely desired to restore the display of His glory that had been marred by our sin, He sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross. On that cross, our sins were crushed onto Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53, 1 Peter 2:24) and Jesus was consequently separated from His Father (Matthew 27:44-45) because our sins were placed on Jesus. (2 Corinthians 5:21) And by crushing our sin onto Jesus Christ, the Father's wrath was satisfied and sin was killed in Christ. (John 19:30) And now we are free to respond to God's invitation of the gospel because our sin problem has been taken care of through the cross. God lovse you and wants you to have eternal life in heaven. And John defines this life very clearly as knowledge of the God. (John 17:3) This means loving Him and glorifiying Him. And all you have to do when the living gospel is presented to you is to just simply believe and passively receive by faith the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 1:16-17) And so I want to close my presentation with what will happen if you accept the wonderful gift of God through Christ!! When you die and go to heaven, you will see God's face (commonly called the beatific vision in theology) and ..... I can't even describe it so I will just say pure happiness that cannot be described. Read Revealtion 21-22 if you want a little preview of what will happen. Just remember unbeliever, God desires you to end your quest of happiness and Christ is infinitely willing to satisfy you with Himself. Just passively accept the gift by faith. Don't try cleaning up your life or making a committment to do all these things for Him. (He doesn't need you to do things for Him as He is self-sufficient) Just accept His love for you and you will find pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11, 73:25-26) Thanks for reading this and it was my great joy to depict the glory of God as accurately as I possibly can and to joyfully pursue your happiness in the Amazing and Living GOD!!