The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. Nahum 1:7 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/nam.1.7.KJV
God is good!
Author: Tracy Eldridge
This my witness for my Lord and Savior on the web. I pray that you find these posts useful in your search for Jesus.
http://thelivingmessage.com
On that day…
It won’t matter how much money you had in this life. It won’t matter if you won an Oscar or an Emmy or a Grammy. It won’t matter if you were the MVP at the Super Bowl or at the World Series.
What will matter is: Do you know Jesus as your Savior and does He know you? There is no gray area for salvation. It’s like being dead or pregnant, you either are or you’re not.
Trials come…
Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. 1 Peter 4:16 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/1pe.4.16.KJV
A model for prayer
Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t pray like those who have no hope. In Matthew chapter 6 you will find His model for our prayers. Praying just His model is good but you have to make it yours.
5“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.a
10 Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,b
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,c
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.d
What do I mean when I said “make it yours”? Be specific in your prayer. Tell God what is going on in your world. He knows already if you are a Christian or not, but tell Him how things are. Talk to Him. He is the Creator. He is our Creator and He knows you better than you do! Whatever the problems are or even the praise that you want to thank Him for…just tell Him! He wants to hear from us, good or bad, He loves you and He will hear you.
Jesus made it a point to pray to His Father every morning. He thanked Him for the food that they ate and for the miracles which were performed through Jesus during His ministry by the Father. Our lives would be so much less than they are if God didn’t care for us. I would not want to live in a world or the universe even if God had created all of this and then sat back to watch. Without His influence over everything, including us, the universe would be without life and we would not be here.
The so-called “spark” of Life in everything is God and it is because of His love toward all of His creation that everything is the way it is. The planets are in their orbits, the stars move in their pathways around the galaxy and the galaxies move in relation to one another. It is God Who is the “Clock maker” and it has always been His design which has kept everything in its place. Scientists say that it is gravity and mass which have influence over these things but until God placed these galaxies and stars and planets in their places their mass didn’t matter. Because until He put them there, there was nothing. No time, no light, no mass, no stars, no planets. Other than an empty space there was only God until He said, “Let there be Light!”.
God loves us. Each one of us and until we feel His touch and know that we can’t come to know Him except by believing in Jesus as our Savior we are lost and empty. We feel that there is something we need but without His touch and our faith growing, we don’t know what that something is. Many of us spend years searching for it and we become bitter and angry when we can’t find “it”. The problem is that it isn’t an “it” it is a Person and He is Jesus Christ our Savior and Redeemer.
Consider the heat…
In the South, we live in a very humid area of the country especially during the summer. High pressure “cells” come through our area of the country at least once or twice every month. They begin well at times but when we get behind the high pressure “cell” it pushes humidity and warm air from the Gulf of Mexico up into Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and parts of Texas too. Many of us have heard the saying about the heat in the Southwest “but its a dry heat”. Going from our state to Arizona is a wake-up call for sure but 110 degrees is HOT whether it is dry or humid although humidity would make that temperature nearly unbearable.
Why am I speaking about heat and the heat of summer to be specific? Because…hell is HOT and it could be a “dry heat” but an eternity there is not what most people think of when they hear about hell. Dry or not, we don’t know what temperature hell is and the lake of fire brings up images of the inside of a volcano to me. So consider this…all unbelievers and Satan and his demons will be cast into the lake of fire. Most people think that it doesn’t sound bad but people in hell will have eternal bodies. The kind of body which doesn’t die regardless of your circumstances but it will be able to experience pain
Being cast into a volcano in our body that we have here on Earth will be painful for only a few seconds. An eternal body that is cast into the lake of fire will live in the fire and pain forever. An immortal body will heal if it is hurt, whether from a gunshot or from thousands of degrees of lava. This place was not created by God for humanity. It was created for Satan and his demons but when we rebel and decide to live our life without God or Jesus as our example for living we are siding with Satan whether we worship him or not. Even if you go to church and “act” like a Christian for most of your life, thinking that you will get into Heaven because of your “righteousness” you are wrong!
The heat that we feel in the Southeast is nothing compared to hell and the fact that we will go to hell because we have rejected the offer of eternity by rejecting Jesus as our Savior just makes the lie that we believed even worse. Living our short lives here in the humidity and heat of summer is child’s play compared to the eternity that you will live in hell because you rejected Jesus as your Savior.
Remember the man who asked Jesus to “remember me when you come into your Kingdom”? Jesus told him that he would be in Paradise that day for the simple act of believing in Jesus and Who He was. He is at the right hand of the Father now waiting for God to tell Him to bring the church up there.
Comfort one another
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/2co.1.3-4.KJV
Point others to your Savior
Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. Colossians 4:6 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/col.4.6.KJV
Your speech should let others see that your Savior is Jesus regardless of your circumstances.
Life or death, your choice…
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8:6 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/rom.8.6.KJV
Put away everything that gets between you and God
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 2 Corinthians 10:5 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/2co.10.5.KJV
Something is in the closet…
When I was a child, I didn’t have anyone to call for my fears at night. I have never thought about it much before today. I heard a song a little while ago about a child that was scared and didn’t want his Dad to leave.
The thing that we should realize is that when you have Jesus Christ as your Savior, He is always with you no matter where you are. Of course when you are young the dark can be scary. The closet looks scary with the lights off. The air conditioner can make things move and cause shadows to move and your imagination can go into overdrive and make these normal things seem to be much worse than they are.
As Christians, the “monsters” that we face are real but we can’t see them, thankfully. Satan and his demons and principalities can cause real problems in your life. Our only defense is to study God’s Word and have many scriptures memorized so we can use them to fend off their attacks. When you consider all of the wars and problems and everything that is going on in the world, take a look at where these things are happening. Notice that most of them are taking place where God or Jesus or both are not embraced by the culture or the country.
If you don’t believe in God or His Son, Jesus, as your Savior then what are your gods? Who or what do you ask for help in times of need and illness or trials? There is no name under Heaven that brings salvation except the name of Jesus! The previous sentence is a paraphrase of Acts 4:12 but it is the Truth. Believing in Jesus as your Savior and Lord is the only way to get to Heaven or to experience eternal Life! You can keep following other ways or other “prophets” or even other “gods” but none of them will give you life in eternity except Jesus. Others will lead you strait to hell for eternity and that is not Life.
What is in your closet? Is it an old, dusty Bible that you haven’t read in years? Then I suggest getting it out and dusting it off so you can read it and seek God and His Son in its pages. Eternal life is found in no other name except Jesus so make sure that you know Him and that He knows you too while there is still time in this life to make that choice.
