21Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

– 1 John 3:21-22

It’s quite simple isn’t it? We receive because we stay faithfully committed to God. Asking with unwavering confidence is the challenge. Billions of people do the asking and play the part of the faithful; going to church regularly, wearing God outwardly in public, praying often; seems like it should be enough, but it is not. 

What confuses people is the genuineness of their behavior, let me not state it as performance, but deem it as sincere. Most of the billions of Christians, or for that matter, all souls seeking spiritual development or outright seeking God can very well be sincere, but ‘Sincerity’, even ‘Genuine Sincerity’ is not, let me repeat it, is NOT the same as ‘Genuine Connectivity to God’:

• One is ‘belief in the belief’, the other is ‘actual belief’.
• They are very very hard to distinguish from each other.
• The former ‘feels’ like the latter, and it’s so close you can reach out and touch it.
• One is the highest hope the other is actual.
• But only genuine is actual.

Analogies can be easier to assist with getting the point than the precision of direct words, which is why many prophets speak in parables, like Jesus and the great Jewish leaders have for thousands of years:

• Sincerely believing in oxygen cannot replace actually having oxygen to breathe.

A condemning heart is when our own minds and spirit say ‘it is isn’t so’ or ‘it’s not for you’ or ‘you could never obtain or deserve’, which even in the most extreme cases of behavior gone wrong, we can always be redeemed by our eternally forgiving God. For Christian’s, Christ is the conduit, for Jews they go directly to God; a big difference certainly, but the destination is the same.

Genuineness is the only purpose, most people are sincere.

It’s close, but unfortunately, not close enough.

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