Month: October 2018

God’s names


El-Shaddai: My supply. My nourishment, Almighty God. Genesis 17:1.

Jehovah-Jireh: Provider and my vision. Genesis 22:14.

Did you know that many people do not believe that the history which is portrayed in Genesis ever happened? Also in the schools today much of our history is being played down or not taught as it was forty or fifty years ago. 

So, why did I name this writing, this article as “God’s names”? Because in the book of Genesis God’s names are shown to us and they show different aspects of Who God really is. Jehovah is the covenant name of God so with the -Jireh added onto it then it literally means “God my Provider”. As you can see from the two examples above, God supplies our needs and He is our Provider.

So…why do people in America and around the world see religion and specifically Christianity as a religion which marginalizes and excludes others? The only reason that they think this is because they don’t like the Book that we use as our Bible, it is God’s Word and the Truth. They don’t like an absolute Truth which can’t be changed because it is absolute!

The Bible is God’s Word and His instruction book to the whole world and it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and given to the men who wrote it down. It is immutable and it cannot be changed nor is it a document which gives us His wisdom for living. Although some have changed the words in the Bible for their own purposes, God has said that this will bring punishment to those who add to or take away from His Word.

This promise is in the book of Revelation, but I believe that the punishment will not be applied to only that book but to the entirety of God’s Word. I pray that all of those who read these words or those from God’s Word will seek Him out as their Savior because He is the only way to eternity in Heaven.kid_reading_bible

Read His Word as a child because His Word is good for instruction and for teaching and for your growth in faith and in the knowledge of Him. Don’t neglect the reading and studying of His Word because it is food for your soul and for the cleansing of your mind.

 

 

 

 

God’s love casts out fear


There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1jn.4.18.KJV

The great equalizer


In life, we are unequal in most respects no matter how much we like to think that we have equality. Only a few have money and are wealthy enough to live without much fear, yet even they worry about losing it in some way. Some others have “rights” to be equal in most respects to others who have seemed to have “rights” which others wanted. These rights extend to women as well as men, those who are of dark skin or some other “race” rather than Caucasian. The great equalizer in our world extends his reach to every person, whether of great wealth or poor, to those of dark skin pigment or light. His name is Death.

All of us die at some point or another and there is no one who will escape this appointment. Some of us may die at a young age and some may live a long life even past their one-hundredth birthday. But eventually, Death will find you. We don’t like to think about death and yet it will come to each of us at some point because it is the way of things and it is part of life. We are born, we grow, we live and we die. In this, there is no argument.

So why do we try to cheat death when we reach a certain point in our lives? We run and exercise and eat healthy (but bland) foods, we go to doctors who can tighten our skin so we don’t look as old as we are. All of this is foolishness. Why? Because your body is the age which it is and there is no changing that. Regardless of how you look on the outside, your cells and the rest of your body are the age which you are and there is no turning back the clock.

Death still comes.

Unless you have the hope of eternity with Jesus as your Savior. This physical life will end unless Jesus takes you home before you die. Which could happen sooner than most people realize. When will it happen? I don’t know but according to the Bible, it will happen. In 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-17 Paul writes these words:

13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this, we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

This is the only “escape” from death that will come one day. If you are a believer in Jesus as your Savior. If you haven’t accepted Him as your Savior and repented of your sinful ways then you will have no part in being taken up to be with Him. I pray that all who read this have given their hearts to Him and if you haven’t, please don’t wait. Death doesn’t notify you ahead of time when your time is up, so make sure of your destination before he comes to call on you.

Overcome evil with good!


Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/rom.12.21.KJV

Lifetime of learning


It is very possible to live even a short time without learning something, unfortunately, it is wholly possible to live a very long time and not learn very much at all. Why is this so? Is it because we don’t like learning or if we do like it we only want it a little at a time.

Each day that we live on Earth we learn something which we didn’t know before. So why do we try so hard to learn as much as we can in our field of study or our vocation? There are days in which we learn a lot and then there are days when we don’t learn much at all. Can you see a pattern forming here?

Our learning during our lifetime is usually controlled in some way by our schooling and by how much we truly want to learn. But is our learning in school and maybe in college actually benefiting the world and our life in it? It depends on our course of study actually. Some college education is geared toward a certain profession and some majors in college are for historians or liberal arts, but what can those fields change in our world? I know that architects and engineers are needed as well as lawyers and doctors, but what other profession helps mankind in life and in the death of a loved one?

Being a Christian and taking the True Gospel into the world or teaching those who will listen is the greatest calling a person can know. Being a pastor of a church and bringing God’s Word to those who attend church services is also an important vocation in God’s Kingdom. So why do pastors get a raw deal unless they are called to a large church? At smaller churches, they are the “staff” except for the person who controls the money in the church.

But in large churches, they are more like a CEO of a company which also adds more stress to their lives.

Image result for images for reading the Bible

The best education that anyone can have is to read the Bible through at least once in a year and then do it again and again. Why? Because God’s Word is alive and it gives you the wisdom that you are looking for or that wisdom that you need even when you don’t know you needed it. You also learn more from God’s Word every time you read it prayerfully because the Holy Spirit will reveal more of Him to you each time.

Will you ever learn everything that God’s Word can teach you? No, not even if you live to be 150 and read it at least once every year! His Word is alive and powerful and filled with His wisdom so that you get much more from it each time you read it. So make it a point to read a few chapters each day, then you will know how much you really don’t know about God and His Son, Jesus.

We walk by faith, amen.


(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
2 Corinthians 5:7 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/2co.5.7.KJV

What is most important to you?


There are many, many answers to this question and they are not the same for everyone. Some of these would include our family or our children. Other answers may be more generic like world peace or just to live a good life. But when you get right down to the “brass tacks” of what is actually most important to you…in today’s politically charged world and in our culture, most people really wouldn’t know the true answer to that question.

If you were held at gunpoint and your life was threatened could you come up with an answer which makes sense and is the actual truth of your life? I honestly don’t know if any of us are that certain about what or who is the most important in your life. I have been thinking about it since beginning to write this and I just don’t know for certain. Isn’t that a little weird?

I have been married to my wife for twenty-six years and a few months but is she the most important person in my life? What about my son? Is he the most important person in my life right now? Even if I changed the wording a bit and asked: Who is the most important person in your life? Would that clear the water a bit? For some of us it might help but for others, I’m not so sure.

What is my point with this question? For one thing, it is to get us to think about it because we rarely do in today’s world. We are so busy running around doing things, going places, getting things done or going to the doctor’s office until we seem to be in a continual spin cycle. We never really settle down long enough to think about who or even what is most important to us or to our family while we have the time to think about it.

And really, if you sit down for about ten or fifteen minutes you will realize exactly what I am talking about. We don’t sit and talk much anymore. We are texting each other or liking a post or a picture or something funny which we share with our “friends” on Facebook. What did all of that accomplish? What does our electronic “friends list” actually mean in our lives? Do you really know these people or did you accept their request because you both have a friend in common?

What about taking one day every week and spending it with actual friends while learning more about our Savior at church. No pushing to make a change in your life. No asking for money that you don’t think you have to give for the work of the church. Just friends meeting at church and listening to a study of God’s Word for about an hour or so. God loves you and me and everyone else in this world but He also knows which ones will spend time with Him whether it is daily or weekly or just occasionally.

How would your friends feel if you only spent time with them on special occasions? How about once or twice in a month? How would your family feel if you did this? God loves each of us more deeply than our family members do and yet many of us don’t give Him or His Word much time at all in our lives. Many of us don’t spend as much time reading the Bible as we do liking pictures on Facebook each day or even in a week’s time!

There would be a massive revival in America if we could get off of Twitter or Facebook and pay attention to God’s Word at least as much as we did to those social media pages!

If we read God’s Word as much as we read social media in our country, the world around us would be impacted in ways that we cannot imagine right now.

God should be more important to each of us than our “friends” or even our family because He made it possible for us to have eternal life with Him. Eternity without Him is a pointless existence but it will happen if you leave Him out of your life until you die and then its too late to change that outcome.

Think about it while you can today…right now in fact because you don’t know when your time is up.

The most important book


theMiddleoftheBible

No truer Truth can be found outside of this one!

Love one another


And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1pe.4.8.KJV

Is God in control?


First and foremost, God is sovereign. Nothing that happens in the whole universe is a surprise to Him. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father’s will (Matthew 10:29).

So, why do we look around at all of the tragedies and the aborted babies and think that God either has a part in it or He doesn’t care about them at all? God does care and one day soon the whole world will see this and understand. They may not like what they see or how they come to understand that He is in control…but they will come to that conclusion.

Is our life in His control as well? Not in the sense that He makes us do things in our everyday lives, but He does cause things to work together for our good in the trials which we face. We may not see that this is happening and it may not feel that way at the time but God is in control. Whether the outcome is good or bad or better than we expected it to be, it is He that directs our path and the outcome as well.

There seem to be more people in America who think that they know better than God about how to live their lives, especially when it comes to being “moral” or “good”. God is still in control and always has been yet people want to argue with Christians about the “mythical” book which is the Word of God. There are too many archaeological proofs which have been found all over the Middle East which point to verses in the Bible. Proving that a city or a place which was mentioned in God’s Word actually exists.

In America, it seems that since our country has always been identified as a “Christian nation” many people here seem to take the message of Jesus for granted. We don’t seem to put much weight in preaching or learning about Jesus or about our own sinful condition which He came to save us from. Also, it seems that nobody looks at or even cares about where their eternal destination may be, even though that is what most of the New Testament was written to prepare us for!

Our lives, as short as they are by comparison to eternity, are the spiritual proving ground for that life which we enter into after this one is done. The problem in America seems to be that nobody wants to learn about it (eternity) and they don’t want to hear about their own sins or how to live righteously while going through this life. I did not say that we could live without sin, but living a righteous life is possible even when we fall and make mistakes in this life.

Living a righteous life is actually what we are called to do as a Christian. By prayer and telling others about Jesus, essentially showing the fruit of the Spirit in your life and in your walk with Jesus every day…that is living a righteous life in Christ!

Image result for fruit of the Spirit

Jesus, our Redeemer, and our Shepherd knows His own and He can see the fruit which we produce in our lives and in the lives which we live through Him while we are walking with Him in this life. Is it easy to be fruitful as a Christian? That depends upon your priorities. If you place more importance on life around you or your career or your family then this life is going to feel like a burden. Some people even treat it as a hindrance to your happiness, but when you do this you are only thinking of this life and not eternity. Live with eternity in your mind so that the life around you doesn’t get in the way.