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

God cares for you!


There are many people in the world today who are considering suicide because of depression or PTSD or any number of other mental illnesses. Now, I’m not going to write anything here that will give you the idea that praying to God or giving your heart to Jesus is going to cure you of your illness because it may happen but then it may not happen. God can use that illness to bring you closer to Him and cause you to depend upon Him more or He could cure you of it so you can give someone else hope.

If I dashed your hopes here, I’m sorry. But it is the truth. Sometimes God does use our “thorns”, whatever they may be, to bring us closer to Him. Sometimes, He will bring you to the edge of your tolerance and then give you relief from the illness. If this sounds discouraging, I do apologize but David was often depressed and hurting when he was writing the Psalms. Some of the prophets were depressed and asked God to strike them dead, I have done this myself.

Why do I write such a depressing post today? Because, I don’t want you to think that God will miraculously cure you of your problem, whatever it may be, if you give your life to Him. He may do exactly that, but it is His prerogative whether He will or will not cure you just because you have given your life and heart to Jesus. God isn’t required to cure you. He is God after all and He doesn’t have to do anything that we ask of Him unless it is His will to do so and it would bring Him glory.

It sounds as if I am making God out out to be jealous and petty but He is not. He created the universe and everything in it, including us and our world, so that we would want to know Him. I think it is an awesome honor to be able to know Him because He has known you since before the universe was made! He loves each of us with such a deep and abiding love that we really can’t imagine it…but He does so for our benefit and for His glory! We have His grace and His mercy given to us for the sole purpose of being drawn to Him for our salvation. His Son died on the cross to pay for our sins so that we don’t have to. Your life doesn’t have to end when this “shell” that we live in dies IF you will give your heart to Jesus and repent of your sins and follow Him!

It is not rocket science or some kind of physical game that God plays with us. All that is truly required is that we realize that we need Jesus in our life, confess your sins and ask Him to come in and give you a new heart for Him. When that truly happens, your life will never be the same again.

Seek Him while there is life in your body today, because none of us are guaranteed tomorrow!

They labor in vain unless Jesus is the foundation


Amen

Your life is a battleground


If you are a Christian then this is true. Satan is always trying to catch you in some way to say something out of character for a Christian or maybe even do something which would make someone think that you aren’t a Christian. It happens every day to those of us who are Christians or even claim to be. If you don’t believe it, look at the story about Jesus and His forty days in the desert fasting. At the end of it He was hungry just as any of us would be. Don’t tell me you can’t fast because I have done it. Granted, I did it with water and juice and Jesus didn’t have the juice but it is possible to do. Getting back to Jesus’ story…after forty days He was weak in his body and very likely He could imagine all kinds of food around Him. That was where Satan came to Him and began tempting Him with “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread to satisfy your hunger“.

Jesus countered that with “Man shall not live on bread alone but by every Word which comes from God“. Satan even had the audacity to say, “If you are the Son of God”! He knew Who Jesus was and he knew that Jesus could’ve done exactly the thing which he was tempting Him to do, but to do so would’ve been against the will of the Father. We are tempted every day with thoughts and feelings and other kinds of temptations from our past lives, the life we lived before the Holy Spirit took up His home in our heart. But, we have His Spirit and it is this Spirit that we should listen to every day because He can teach us more about our Savior and our position as His disciple.

Are we disciples of Jesus? If we are truly Christians and have asked Him to come into our heart and our life and cleanse us from our old ways and bring about a change in our life then we are His disciples. We also need to be walking with Him each and every day reading the Word of God and learning more about our Savior so that we can use His Word to counter any temptation that may be thrown at us during the day. Don’t be misled, Satan and his demons will send all kinds of thoughts and temptations your way to cause you to stumble or just make your witness for Jesus ineffective. It only takes one misstep that someone sees or hears to ruin any credibility that you had as a Christian and that credibility can be hard or even impossible to get back.

Pray that the temptation will be light and that your faith in Jesus is stronger. Read God’s Word and use it to counter any temptation that comes your way because in perseverance in your faith you can show that you are saved and sealed as a child of God in Jesus Christ.

Don’t be afraid, trust in the Lord!


Amen

The Lord will save you


The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/zep.3.17.KJV

Thank you, Lord


How much do we owe the Lord in gratitude? Everything. If it weren’t for Him we wouldn’t be alive at all. If He had not seen us in the fullness of time from the very beginning, knowing that we would need His strength and His mercy in our lives…we would be lost and without hope. But God did see us and He chose each of us to come to know Him through Jesus Christ, His Son. There are so many things which we owe our thanks to God for until I couldn’t begin to list even the things which He does for me on one day, regardless of considering my life or the world around us!

God provides us with the air that we breathe and the world in which we live, yet there are many who either choose not to believe in Him or just don’t want to believe in Him and His Son. We have been given a wonderful gift through the knowledge of Jesus and His sacrifice for our sins. We should be thankful for that gift and live our lives accordingly because one day soon, He is coming back and He will be coming as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Amen

God loves you!


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Live free in Jesus Christ!


Be thankful for everything…


The Lord is my Rock and my Deliverer!


And he said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence. I will call on the Lord , who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.
2 Samuel 22:2‭-‬4 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/2sa.22.2-4.KJV

Why should Christians be afraid of anything that man can do when we have a Deliverer Who is our Lord and Savior? While it is true that in today’s world there are evil men and we are experiencing evil times with diseases and wars and natural disasters happening all around us, God is still in control. He knows what is happening and He is allowing it to happen true enough, but His plan and the outcome of His plan will be glorious beyond our imagination. Consider living in squalor today but you have faith in God and in Jesus. What a wondrous joy it will be to walk the streets of purest gold one day!

Jesus said that He was going to prepare a place for us and that He would come again and take us with Him to be there in that place. We look at all of the “things” which we can have in this life and we usually think that “life couldn’t get any better than this”. But, eternity is going to be so much more than we can imagine now until it will likely be days before I can pick my jaw up from the floor! God would not have made those promises to us if He wasn’t going to fulfill them. So, we need to make sure that our life is in His hands and that we are ready when that day comes. Amen?