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He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. [NASB]

John 3:18-20

Admit it. You don’t believe in God because you don’t want to change the way you live.

You’ve built up lots of reasons in your mind why you don’t believe and our culture has certainly given you plenty of ammunition.

You don’t like anyone, including God, telling you what to do or how to live.

You’ve latched on to lots of ideas about what happens to you when you die. But you really don’t like thinking about it at all so you fall back on the old, “nobody knows what happens after you die.” Of course, you haven’t bothered to find out what The Bible says about that or what it says about how you can find out. If you do what The Bible says and find out that there are consequences for your actions, that would ruin your fun.

You convince yourself that if God is real, He’ll be just like you. And you would certainly not send you to Hell, no matter what you did. Besides, you’re not as bad as other people, right? God judges on a sliding scale, right? Well, if He doesn’t, He should. And you’ll make sure He understands that when you die, right?

Do you even know what it would take for you to believe in God? Have you asked yourself? What could God do to prove Himself to you? Burning bush? Loud thunderous voice from the sky? What would it take?

So, OK, let’s say He does whatever it is you want Him to do to prove Himself to you. What happens when He tells you all the stuff in The Bible is real? What happens when He tells you that you have to humble yourself? You have to confess your sins and ask to be forgiven. What happens when He tells you that He’ll know if you’re sincere or not based on how you behave after that? If you keep on willfully sinning then there’s probably a good chance you’re not really sorry for your sins at all; you just don’t want to get punished.

What if He tells you all this? What if you have to change your whole life? Even if He tells you He’ll help you by taking away your desire to sin against Him? Are you willing to change?

If not, then what? God did what you wanted in order to prove He exists but then He tells you that you have to change your life and you don’t want to. Does He just disappear? Does He stop existing because you don’t like what He said? You don’t like the message so you get rid of the messenger?

This is how you know that you’ve been fooling yourself. It isn’t that you don’t believe in God. It isn’t that you can’t find out if He exists or not. The fact is, you don’t want to know. There’s nothing He could do to prove He exists if He also tells you that you’ll have to change the way you live. You like sinning. And even if God says He’ll take those desires away, you don’t want Him to take them away. You don’t want those desires gone. You’re in charge of your life.

So, you’ve built this elaborate philosophy to convince yourself that you can live your whole life any way you want to and never have to deal with the consequences. You’ve had to do this because your conscience bugs you sometimes. You need your brain to help you shut that thing up.

The problem is, you’re not fooling God. Do you really think He’s going to change the way He operates just because you want Him to? You’re like a heroin addict that keeps shooting up every day and thinking he’s not going to die from it. You can convince yourself of whatever you want to but that doesn’t change the outcome.

At least admit the truth. At least have the guts to say, “I like my sin. I don’t want to stop. I realize there is a price to pay for that but I don’t care; I want to live the way I want to live.” Otherwise, you’re just thinking you can wish reality into being or you’re hoping you can plead ignorance on Judgement Day. You think you can tell God that you didn’t know and that He didn’t do enough to prove Himself to you. Forget that you can get a Bible in any city in the country. You can walk into a church on any Sunday and start asking questions. You need to stick to that “ignorance” story.

But again, who are you fooling? Do you really think God’s going to go, “Oh yeah! You’re right. I should have done more. And what was I thinking wanting you to stop having all that fun. Forget about it. Go on into Heaven.”

Seriously? Is that what you’re betting your eternity on?

Be honest and realize that you’re going to spend an eternity in a really bad place. Forget the movies where Hell is this big party. Think of the worst things that happen to people in this life: murder, disease, torture. Take 5 minutes and think of the worst things people have done to each other throughout history. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? Can you imagine going through that again, forever, over and over again? Do you really think that the Devil can’t come up with worse stuff? Do you seriously think Hell is going to be any better than that? Like someone’s going to get to Hell and say, “Man, this is a LOT better. What a relief.” Yeah, right. If there’s even a possibility that Hell’s real, isn’t it worth investigating, even a little, to avoid going there?

So, understand where you’re going or start asking some questions. And don’t stop just because you don’t get the answers you want. You can go with some philosophy or religion that tells you that your eternity is based on what you do and how you live. Of course, that bar changes with every generation and you never know when you’ve done enough. Or you can find out the truth: that none of us is good enough to earn our way to Heaven. Thankfully, God loved us enough to have Jesus take our punishment for us. If we really understand that, we’re not going to keep doing all the stuff that Jesus had to die for.

So, we can accept the gift or just say, “No thanks. I’m going it alone.” Fine. But stop thinking that you can create reality by just thinking things into being. You don’t stop existing after you die just because you want it to be true. You don’t automatically get into Heaven because you think you deserve it. You don’t get to determine God’s criteria. You can’t wish a pile of gold into being so stop thinking you can wish your own kind of god into being. The real God is going to do what He wants no matter what you think.

Be honest with yourself about what your trading those sins for. Have some fun now but don’t act shocked when it comes time to pay for all that fun. Don’t complain that it isn’t fair or that you didn’t know. You do know or at least you know how to find out.

Read The Bible. Grab a Christian and start asking questions. If the things he tells you don’t match The Bible, stop listening to him and find someone else. If you go into a church and the service is like an infomercial, getting you all pumped up, telling you that your sins are OK; guess what, its probably an infomercial. Go somewhere else.

Ask God to help you understand what The Bible says. Ask Him to help you find a good church. Ask Him to give you faith.

You’re not seriously willing to spend eternity in Hell just so you can do what you want for a few years in this life, are you? Seriously?

Quit messing around. Find out the truth. Quick. You’re running out of time.