I (Ryan) knocked on a door last night and a young lady answered. We had a nice conversation about God. I asked her if she were to die today why she would go to heaven. She answered by saying it is because she believes in Jesus. As we talked further, she said she hasn’t gone to church in four years since her mom passed away. She said her mom used to drag her there, but she just hasn’t attended. She has epilepsy and is not permitted to drive. Her husband doesn’t believe in the God of the Bible, but follows the Norse religion? I guess he follows Thor?

“Her husband believes in Thor?”

Anyway, she said she does need to get baptized and get back to church. As we talked further, she said she also follows the teachings of Buddha. She went on to say that she believes that what we do in this life affects what happens in our next life. She didn’t use the word Karma, but that is what she was getting at.

I told her that multiple lives are not part of the Bible. We are eternal beings now, but what is undetermined is where we will spend eternity. I explained that all the world religions can be grouped into one bucket, and it is a separate bucket than the God of the Bible. All the other world faiths are working, striving to fulfill the requirements of their religion so that somehow, someway, they might be reincarnated into a better person, or they may reach enlightenment, or to be with Allah.

God tells is that we could never achieve heaven on our own. We have all sinned and have fallen short of God’s glorious standard (Romans 3:23). God says we can never get there, but he wants us there with him. That is why he sent his son to this planet to die for us. His blood washes away our sins and makes a way for us to be with him forever in heaven. Faith in Christ is a relationship, not a religion.

So instead of relying on our own human effort to try to get up to a place that we say we want to go, God in the flesh of Jesus came down to us. He did what we could never do. We are accepted by God by accepting what Christ did on the cross. Period.

I continued and said that God is a jealous God, and he will have no other God’s before him. And if we say we are followers of Jesus, then we can’t be following the teachings of Buddha. Christian means Christ follower, how can you say you follow Jesus AND follow Buddha?

Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead….

Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead, the 350 million gods in the Hindu faith have never been alive…. Why don’t you want to follow the one that rose from the dead and is alive today? No other faith has this. No other faith has God come down, to his creation, to become his creation in the form of Jesus, to lead us to the father.

I encouraged her further and said we would love to do a Bible study with her. We exchanged numbers and my wife is scheduling with her now. Please pray that she can surrender her life to Jesus and follow him alone. God is clear in his word. We need to follow him with everything.