Christian, Heaven Book About Jesus, Racism
Writing Sampler

Racism
I shouldn’t have been surprised in the summer of 2007 when I sat next to a man waiting for a band to play at a suburban community festival.

He grew increasingly perturbed because the sound check was taking so long. He had had enough of the black band and apparently he was an “expert” on their inability to get ready fast enough. “If I had the Ku Klux Klan and a gun, I’d shoot them all,” he said without hesitation. I kept silent. I decided I couldn’t say anything that would mend this man’s sorry heart.

Red, yellow, black and white, God loves them all. Do you?

Existentialism
Today, I’m left with a feeling that man complicates the meaning of life with different philosophical views that often aren’t easy to grasp.

Strip away our pride, throw in some humility and God’s plan for our salvation is pretty simple. Admit your sins, accept that Jesus in His sinless state was the perfect sacrifice for our sins and thank Jesus by loving Him.

For many of us, He just doesn’t rate because we’re more interested in our own affairs than His.

Gambling
It sounds funny, but several years ago I felt lured in by one game at Chuck E. Cheese. It was a round clear dome with racing lights. If you hit a button at the moment the No. 10 lit up, you could win the whole prize – maybe 200 tickets (enough to get a tiny plastic toy). I kept feeding the machine my quarters. Once, I won. I wanted more.

No Paycheck
In November 1998, I went to the unemployment office for the last time. I hated going there, and my heart was too distant from God. It reminded me of the driver’s license places, just icky and full of red tape and bureaucrats.

As I waited in line, I even bemoaned certain workers who just seemed to walk around and take perpetual breaks. I watched the same person get up and down, apparently accomplishing very little.

And then there was Stephen.

He worked at the greeting counter and answered basic questions. He was so upbeat; he really stood out. I don’t recall how I knew he was a Christian. I vaguely remember hearing a half-phrase as he walked by, speaking to someone else. God knew I’d be within earshot.

The Fight
The ordeal helped me wrestle with flaws in how I expressed my moral senses. I overtly found fault with my peers, annoying them with my values. In my insensitivity toward them, I had no regard for how they turned out and where they’d end up in life. I took for granted how fortunate I was to have two parents who cared about me, what I did, who I knew, or what I dreamed about doing.

Nature
Close your eyes, feel the breeze on your face and imagine the power and brilliance of God.

Oceans and sunsets. Mountains and trees. Human bodies and
atoms. His handiwork is everywhere. He made the world and everything in it. You can’t help but see His fingerprints.

Nature is one of God’s most obvious and greatest calling cards. He wants us to enjoy what He made, take care of what He made. At a minimum, we can at least give Him the credit.

No Coincidences
Nothing in life is a coincidence. I realize God created the world and the winds probably blow relative to natural laws. Evaporation impacts our overall weather. But the moment we were conceived was not an arbitrary event. God planned it from the beginning of time.

Imagine the detail of His timeline and tapestry. He knows when our heart will beat. He knows how the blood moves through our body. He knows what we’ll be dreaming about 10 years from now as surely as He knows who we’ll meet in an hour.

God either allows things to happen or weighs in. I think He prefers to come beside us in times of adversity rather than line everything up for our pleasure or safety. Regardless, everything is filtered by Him. It’s not merely synchronicity.

Marriage & Family
On the topic of unconditional love…

Of all the chapters in this book, this is the toughest to write. I know my failings. My family knows my faults. To talk about the family ideal feels hypocritical. But marriages and families aren’t about perfection. They’re about growth. In a way, they’re incubators that help us turn into something more beautiful than we were the day before.

As a family man, I need to own up to my sarcasm or my absentminded nature. I have to say I’m sorry when I’ve hurt someone with a lousy word or a nasty look. As a dad, I have to forgive when it’s the last thing I feel like doing.

The moments we experience are priceless. Just today, as I watched my son Eric at one of his first football practices, he trained with another team with boys two or three years younger than him.

The other boy tried his best to block Eric who gently showed a blocking technique without overpowering the temporary opponent. Eric encourage the boy with a series of High Fives with diff erent plays. Maybe it was a common gesture, a simple one. My heart was encouraged just the same.

Never the End
I’m an alien.

Earth is not my home. “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (I Peter 2:11).

I’m on a journey to heaven and I would love to meet you there one day. Care to join me? “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

In verse after verse, the Lord talks about how I’m already home even if it doesn’t seem like it on earth. The Lord “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”
(Ephesians 2:6).

The secret to my growth as a Christian isn’t religiosity – going through the motions, attending church, and singing songs around a nativity scene.

It’s about knowing Him today, hanging out with Him.

When I became a Christian in 1998, my paths to Jesus and heaven came to an end. I’m on the brink now. Death is my only obstacle. I’m facing a window more than a path.

Catholicsm
When Catholic Deacon Shelby Friend suggested I trust Jesus with my worries, Jesus suddenly became more than a story, sacrifice, or distant figure. In that sense, you might make a reasonable argument that the Catholic Church brought me to Jesus.

God definitely used someone in the Catholic Church, but the real power came through the Holy Spirit – not the Catholic Church. He had been working on me for 34 years. I had finally broken down and happened to be in the Catholic Church when I surrendered my life to Jesus in 1998. Of course, the Holy Spirit used the Catholic Church to guide and direct me. I understood reverence. I knew some Bible basics and church teachings.

Ultimately, this was personal. It was about Michael Murray finally yielding his will to the Lord’s.

I’m sure the Catholic Church did mention the value of knowing Jesus. Maybe it’s how that was taught and affirmed (or not affirmed). Mostly, I think the emphasis on Catholic Church practices and structure make it difficult for people to establish a personal relationship with Jesus.

The prevailing expectation was always for me to be a “good Catholic.” It wasn’t about being a disciple of Jesus. Did I go to church? Was I confirmed? Did I get to confession once a year? Was I a nice boy? Was I kind to old people on my paper routes?

Pride
When pride swells in people, it really annoys me. Doesn’t it rub you the wrong way too? Unfortunately, the worst example of pride stares at me each morning in a mirror.

Pride is the basis of many common sins – anger, envy, bitterness, and many more.

It’s among the ugliest paths God allows us to walk or, better yet, trudge along. We carry such a weight around our shoulders. Egos are< enormously heavy.

Bible
Has God’s Word affected you? Have you read about Him in an article that cited some of His verses? Have they stirred your soul? If a single one of His words gave you pause, you can view that as yet another path (however seemingly small) in your journey to Him.

Prayer
Sin, of course, separates us from God. Again, He hears the prayers. But we’re not in the right relationship with God because of sin. A single sin can make us ineligible for heaven. Jesus didn’t just die for all of our sins and we’re home free. We have to receive His sacrifi ce as a gift. We do that in no other way than owning up to our sins, turning from them, thanking Him and becoming His follower. Too many people bypass those steps and just run to God. Jesus simply doesn’t rate. If Jesus means a lot to you, how does He know?

Innocents
The Bible makes it clear that God gave us special grace to get us started in life – probably before we made it out of our mothers’ wombs. He planted His truth in our hearts. In the most basic sense, we got a dose of morals, including an ability to sense right or wrong. It’s why some societies have basic rules that sound similar to the 10 Commandments.

Combined with nature, this intuitive sense of justice is like a pilot light we can rely on to get a better sense of Him as He leads us. It’s detailed in Romans 2:12-16:

For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my Gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.

Movies
What are your film preferences? Are your standards a bit loose? Would Jesus enjoy what you like?

Do you avoid some films that offer deep moral insights and thought-provoking messages because of a few words or a brief scene? Will they damage your fellowship with the Lord more than your cussing, gossiping, anxiety, short fuse, bigotry and other sins you experience daily in the theater of yourself?

Judgment Day
God views Jesus’ sacrifice as sufficient, meaning Jesus cleared the way for your death penalty to be wiped away, paid in full. Jesus was eligible to die in your place because He was sinless and conquered death by coming back to life. You aren’t worthy to redeem your sins by dying on a cross. Although Jesus did His part, His loving act means nothing to you unless what He did means everything to you and you relate to Him in a personal way.

Who is Jesus to you?

Hell doesn’t exactly take people to heaven, but the eternal place apart from God sure makes people wonder about heaven. If they’re pondering hell, odds are heaven will get some of their attention as well. In that respect, at least the topic of hell could coincide with Judgment Day and serve as a path to heaven.

Terrororism & Calamities
This isn’t the world God prefers. But He didn’t want us to be a bunch of robots or puppets either, merely existing in heaven. On earth, we’re given a choice whether to seek Him and depend on Him regardless of our circumstances.

If you need to scream at Him before finding Him, let out your rage, your astonishment, your fractured heart and the holes you can’t seem to f ll when your parents, spouses, children, sibling and friends die from diseases, car wrecks and perilous situations. Why your child and not the guy next door?

Cling to the Lord for comfort and peace. One day, He’ll ease the sting of your pain here on earth and perhaps reunite you with your loved ones in heaven.

Global
It’s all about choice. We’re not forced to love Him through His Son, Jesus. He creates; we choose. In all cases, He just knows how we’ll respond.

World religions and spiritual practices can serve as paths to heaven.

Somehow, they just have to get to Jesus along the way. The environment certainly allows for the possibility. With their focus on prayer, sanctity of life, worship and reverence, they get people in tune with the idea of a Creator, someone beyond themselves, a supernatural world if you will.

Jesus is only one step away.

A path that appears to be pointed in a direction other than Jesus hardly seems like a path to heaven. God, unlike us, has the full view.

Just as a drug addict can cry out to the Lord in desperation and dependency, those misled by false religions can – with promptings of the Holy Spirit – discover their direction and initiate a course correction.

The pathway doesn’t necessary end with some kind of cliff with miles before the next ridge. It continues with a curve – sometimes a sharp one, sometimes a gradual bend.

Outside of Jesus, these other beliefs are dead wrong. They all lack an acceptable sacrifice for sins. Salvation is elusive at best.

People like to treat God like He’s a carny working the games at a county fair. It’s as if each religion, cult or spiritual movement represents each long wooden rod in 20 glass milk jugs and all God asks you to do is toss a ring around one to win.

“Step right up,” God bellows. “Any will do.”

I can’t picture God lowering Himself that way, accepting any view of Him or getting out of the way while an individual pays empty homage to a “higher power” that doesn’t exist. God also wouldn’t make a mockery of Jesus by saying, “I changed my mind. My erroneous salvation plan doesn’t apply to everyone anymore. If you worship something, I’m game.”

Other religions claim Jesus was just a man (if He was on the scene at all), that He wasn’t God, that He didn’t die for sins and that He won’t come back again. The Good News is that He’s coming back.

Who do you worship? Why? How? When?