Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been a verrrrrry long time since my last confession.

Growing up Catholic, that was a weekly ritual. I couldn’t receive Holy Communion if I didn’t go to confession on Saturday.

I confess: I often made up sins just so I’d have something to tell the priest. “I lied 3 times….” even if I hadn’t. Gee, that was lie!

That doesn’t make sense!

When Jesus died on the cross, He took away ALL our sins. Sure we are human and we are capable of sinning because of the temptations of the devil, (Read: The Devil Made Me Do It) but when believe in Jesus as our personal savior, we are absolved of our sins. God forgives us. We don’t have to go through a priest.

And then we got the penance: “Say 5 ‘Hail Marys,’ 6 ‘Our Fathers’ and 3 ‘Acts of Contrition’”. I remember rattling them off real fast just to do what I was told. It didn’t mean anything. I was supposedly “set” till the next time I committed a sin.

That, my dear friends are manmade rules. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we have to confess each week before we can partake of the Lord’s Supper.

The Agape Meal or the Lord’s Supper (aka Holy Communion) is something that believers share in remembrance of Christ’s death – of what He did for us.

We are saved by Grace not by good works (Read: Is being “good” good enough). Nothing we alone or any other person can do will get us into heaven. ONLY accepting Jesus Christ as your LORD and SAVIOR.

The “church” made up these rules and regulations to control people who “strayed” and misbehaved in the dark and middle ages.

It wasn’t until Martin Luther discovered in 1525, that we don’t need the church to be saved, but that we are saved by God’s Grace – freely given.

If you read the Bible, you’ll get instructions on how to live daily and how to obey God. That’s what God wants us to do – obey HIm. Legalism was finished when Jesus cried, “It is Finished!” from the cross.

If you read the Bible you’ll see that many things that the Catholic church claims are not Biblical. Isn’t it time that Catholics start questioning the rules and regulations? Isn’t it time that people questions if they’re really going to heaven? If they’ll get left behind when Jesus comes back for His believers in the Rapture?

Read the Bible. That was one of the first things that Martin Luther did was have the Bible printed in German so that the people could read it for themselves. The church controlled all Bible printing and it was in Latin which the common folk didn’t understand.

The people only knew what they heard in church. What the church wanted them to believe.

The Bible is available to anyone who wants to learn the truth. Go to BibleGateway.com and you can read the Bible in any language.

God is waiting for you to learn the truth.

Great Blessings!
Soli Deo Gloria!
Giselle Aguiar
Award Winning Christian Author
http://www.giselleaguiar.com/novel1
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