Not even GOD gets everything He wants

Everything in the Bible derives from One Desire of the Lord’s.

            Everything.

            It may be hard to believe that at the moment, but I can demonstrate that it’s true.

            You’ve probably heard that “everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus Christ”, and that’s essentially true. (I challenge anyone to take my particular favorite verse, Exodus 16:36, and relate it to Christ. But once you read the verse, you’ll understand why I don’t disqualify the statement because of this.)

            Well, you can go one step further than that and say, unequivocally, that everything the Bible tries to teach – all sixty-six books, all 1189 chapters – all teaches the same, singular concept. 

ONE desired outcome for us that the Lord has permeates the ENTIRE Bible, Genesis to Revelation.

            And I’ll tell you what that is after this commercial break…

            Want to know what it is?

            All right, here it is:

           God wants EVERY HUMAN BEING to go to Heaven when they die.

           This post is a very abbreviated version of a book concept I'm sorting through. But here's the general idea.

           When you read the New Testament as a Christian, what is it teaching you?

           Either you're getting direct commissions from Christ to share the Gospel with the entire world - that's the easy one -  or you're reading about how you should behave as a Christian, which besides ensuring your own ticket to Heaven is doing what? It's shaping your life so that you will experience the joy of the Holy Spirit within you, and "those lost souls will see the joy within you and ask where it comes from". We live with the Christian spirit of love so that we may be living testaments to the joy that is Christ, and thereby win souls to Christ.

           What else is in the New Testament? Samples of Christ's life, showing us His glory...samples of the lives of the Apostles (including Paul) in action, seeing the joy within them... a showcase of how Christianity wins in the end in Revelation, hopefully bringing more people to the 'winning side'...

           Even in the Old Testament, the general flow of material can be subdivided into similar categories - showing us how to live; showing us the joys of living this way; demonstrating God's love, mercy, justice, purity, and other qualities; and other similar motivations to come to the side of the Lord. He included beautiful tales of the most unlikely situations for His hand to show itself: the story of Ruth, of Esther, of Job, of Joseph, and many others.

           But even in the warring sections, where God destroys entire nations? Even there, His ultimate purpose is to bring the maximum number of people to Him by purging those who have proven themselves irredeemable - the tribes who Yahweh drove from the land when He brought the Israelites were (by His Own testimony) blasphemous, idolatrous, and otherwise unworthy of salvation. (More so than all of us are in general, that is.) He expunged the heinous, He eliminated the enemies of the Hebrew people completely, in order for His people to thrive.  

           But doesn't that mean He didn't want EVERY person to go to Heaven? If He's condemning entire nations to death, He didn't want them to come to Heaven! He didn't want THEM saved?

          Yes, He did.

          He wanted ALL saved.

          But there comes a time, then as now, when we give up on Him. And when that happens, eventually, God allows them to have their choice, and He allows them to be permanently separated from Him. That is what happened to the Canaanites and the Amalekites and the various other tribes whom God devoted to destruction.

          Even within those destructions, though, God saved those worthy of salvation - even before He destroyed Jericho, He saved Rahab and her family...even when Sodom was worthy of the most brutal annihilation, He sent angels to save Lot and his family... even when all of mankind deserved complete elimination, He saved Noah and his family, and started the population over with them. 

          God doesn't believe in the "No Child Left Behind" policy, but He does believe in the holy equivalent of the American Dream - that anyone can be saved if they want to be. Sinners, Gentiles, former heathens, ANYONE can be granted His Grace.

          More important than His fondest wish, the salvation of all, He grants us OUR fondest wish:

          He honors our choice between God or No God. If we choose God, He will save us. If we choose No God, He will separate us from Himself, even if it grieves Him no end.

          Not even God gets everything He wants.