On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7:22-23‬ ‭NLT‬‬

• We give our time to feed the homeless during the Thanksgiving Holiday. 
• We donate $1 or $2 for breast cancer awareness at the checkout counter in Walgreens or Duane Reade. 
• We give to causes and foundations for children who live in less favorable conditions. 

Even as our heart seems to all but stop when we hear devastating news affecting the lives of our friends and loved ones, and we do all that we can to help those in their time of need, we cannot simply rely on the works we do to get us into Heaven. 

You cannot “earn” a ticket into Heaven. 

“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2:8-10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The gift of God gave us a Savior to redeem us back to Him! There’s no great activity or great work ethic we can have in exchange for this gift. 

I watched this movie once where the child grew up to be an adult and moved on to live independently from his parents. But in his quest to be an “adult” his behavior, conduct, and riotous living was the COMPLETE opposite of what his parents had instilled in him. He returned home for a visit during the holidays. His parents had already heard of the troubled and destructive lifestyle he lived, not to mention his attitude and somewhat disrespectful behavior towards then during this visit was not one they were accustomed to. Finally, having enough of the sarcasm, the young man’s dad stood directly in front of his face, stared him in the eyes and said: “Who are you? I don’t know who you are anymore.” The young man realized how he had changed. The smirk on his face became an expression of sorrow and disappointment. 

Can you imagine standing before the Lord, crying, falling to your feet at His feet, gazing upon our Savior and saying within: “I knew you were real. I knew you were there all the time and now my eyes see you. I felt your presence and I knew it was you!”

And then Jesus says to you: “Who are you?”

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” Romans 8:16

If we do not have His Spirit, He does not know us.

“And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.” ‭‭1 John‬ ‭4:13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The reason Jesus sent the people away in Matthew was not because they didn’t do enough, but because He did not know them.  

We must make sure that we acknowledge the Lord in all that we do so that He works THROUGH us and that He gets the glory, so that He knows us.