OUR PRACTICE

ESTATE PLANNING

PLANNING FOR ETERNITY- THE MOST IMPORTANT PHASE

Congratulations for considering a living trust. This will protect your family from unnecessary estate taxes and from the frustration and extensive time required to go through probate. It is a good thing to plan ahead and get your house in order. We will all die; that is a certainty and being financially prepared is prudent.

But there is another phase of estate planning that needs to be done. In fact, it is the most important phase. You need to decide where you wish to spend eternity. There are two choices. One is significantly better than the other. Choice A is to spend eternity with God. Choice B is to spend eternity separated from God. Choice B, as you may have guessed, is hell….not a pleasant place! Why would anyone choose hell? Frankly, I don’t know, but I do know that many people do make that choice. It may be because they don’t know who God is. It may be because they are confused about the meaning of life.

How does one know that God exists? There are three basic ways. First, look at nature; the stars, moon, sun, galaxies, mountains, rivers, oceans, trees, flowers, animals, birds and all that is around you. Also look at human beings. Just the simplest aspect of our every day existence, like the ability to pick up a pencil, is an enormously complex procedure. It is all the result of a specific intricate design. God is the designer and He makes Himself known through His creation. Second, God has given us a book, which contains His truths. This book, of course, is the Bible. If you have any interest at all in what life is about you owe it to yourself to read the Bible. Thirdly, you have your conscience. When you do something wrong, you know it. For example, you know that murder and stealing are wrong. Animals don’t know this. You know it because you have a conscience. Right and wrong are written on your heart. Where did it come from? It came from God.

God created the entire universe including humans. The purpose for creating us was to have a relationship with Him. Man was originally created without sin …… but with free will. Mankind, through Adam, disobeyed God, and as a result we now all know good and evil and are sinners. Since we all sin, no one deserves to be saved, i.e. to have our sins forgiven and spend eternity with God. However, some will be saved through God’s infinite mercy ……. not by any good works we do. It is simply a gift. There are only two things one must do to be saved. The first is to believe in Jesus, i.e. that He is the son of God and that God raised Him from the dead and the second is to “confess” this belief verbally to others. Once you have done these two things the Holy Spirit will enter you and give you the strength to repent from your past sins and will give you the desire to seek to follow God’s will for your life. God had only one plan for saving us. That was to send his son Jesus Christ to die as a sacrifice for our sins….and to be resurrected. Christ, then, is our Savior and according to the Bible, the only way to be saved is through Him.

So how then should we live? After we accept God’s free gift through Christ, God has good works for us to do. It is not time to sit at home and relax until we go to heaven. God expects us to seek His will for our life and to do it. There is a spiritual battle going on and God will use us to fight His battles if we let Him. True happiness is seeking God’s will for your life and trying to live every day in obedience to His will. This is a lifelong process and can’t be done without work, study and establishing relationships with others who also believe. Being saved may be an instantaneous thing, but growing in the understanding of God’s will for your life and doing it, is a process that will take the rest of your life! Go for it!

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