Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
1 John 4:15 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1jn.4.15.KJV
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
My story…
God called me to be a minister way back in 1983. I was in a “relationship” with a woman who didn’t become my wife and it was a “friendship with benefits”, and I had not been listening to Him very well. I answered the call by going to Oral Robert’s University for a weekend to scope out the place in a way. I felt His call and His Presence touching my life while I was there and I listened, weakly, but I did listen.
But…when I cam home, I decided to reject His call and keep going on with my life like I wanted it and the way that I wanted to do it. Unfortunately, that was not the answer that He wanted to hear from me. It wasn’t but a few months until the woman that I had been in a relationship with found someone else and was planning a wedding until she died in a car accident.
Did that have anything to do with me or my decisions? I don’t know. Could it have been something caused by God or allowed by Him to get my attention? Maybe. But…I still didn’t turn toward Him in the way that I should’ve. My life went through a few more “storms” (to use an overused word) before I finally listened to Him. What kind of storms? Well, a bankruptcy and a divorce and a little while of driving OTR trucks (although driving the trucks was fun).
Actually while driving the trucks I began talking to God while I was driving. I told Him that I had messed up my life by not listening to Him the way I should, so I wanted Him to find my soul mate because I had heard Him the first time I got married but I didn’t listen. This time I wanted Him to find her for me and then make sure I knew it and didn’t walk away this time.
To shorten this a bit I did hear Him and we did get married and we are still married, going on now for twenty-six years now. So, yes, I learned my lesson about listening to God’s “still, small voice”. It is easy to hear if you are listening but it is also too easy to ignore because God’s voice is not loud. He tests your spiritual ears and if you hear Him and acknowledge it then He knows you are listening.
The next time that He got my attention was in ’95 when my grandfather died right around Easter that year and my Mom died on Christmas Eve. It took a year or more before I could continue my college education because I was half-way through my first two years when this happened. God called me again to be His minister about nine years later and this time I listened. I studied His Word during the night shifts while I worked as a Medical Technologist in a lab (during the times when I wasn’t really busy).
In 2011 I was called to be a pastor of a small church close to home and by the grace of God, I am still preaching there. I do realize that this story is about my life but I want to show you that when God calls you to be His minister or His disciple or His follower…don’t turn away from Him and don’t ignore His call on your life!
Love your enemies
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
Luke 6:35 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/luk.6.35.KJV
Walk as He walked
He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.
1 John 2:6 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1jn.2.6.KJV
I am your Savior!
Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord , and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord ; and beside me there is no saviour.
Isaiah 43:10-11 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/isa.43.10-11.KJV
All things were created by Him and for Him
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
Colossians 1:16 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/col.1.16.KJV
I just want the real thing…
If someone asks you to not tell them about religion or the church, they just want the real thing… what do you say? First, tell them about Jesus and why He came in the first place. How should you tell them? Just tell them about your Savior and His message about forgiveness and love which He came to bring to all of us! This is the story of His purpose and the Good News of salvation!
That is the message that counts. Salvation through belief in Jesus and His atonement for your sins and mine on the cross. It doesn’t have to have doctrine or religion attached to it and it doesn’t have to be all flowery and noble. Like the thief on the cross, believe in Jesus as the Son of God, your Savior, and mine. That is all that is needed. It doesn’t require hours of service in His Name or certain amounts of money or other “works” like teaching or preaching. All of that may happen after you have accepted Him as your Savior but they will be done because you love Him and you know He loves you and died for you.
That is the true nature of knowing and loving your Savior. Just know that He loves you and He came to give you hope of eternity through Him. A child can understand it but many of us as “adults” try to dress it up or add things to our belief which are not needed. We try to make a simple belief in our Savior into a life-long project which we have to help Him bring us to salvation and none of that helps at all!
In fact, it hurts our own belief by adding things which we do or think we need to do in order to have salvation. When all that is necessary is our heartfelt need of Him and our belief in Him for our forgiveness and salvation. Because until we come to that place where we know deep down that we need Jesus…we will not seek Him out as our Savior and Lord.
God provided Him as The Atonement for our sins, but the Holy Spirit has to bring us to the point of knowing that we need Him before we will ever seek Him out. Those who are sinning and have never sought their Savior or heard that they need Him will never go looking for Him. It’s kind of like a man who walks by fountains of clear, cool water every day. Until that man is thirsty enough to notice them and seek one of those fountains for a drink, he will never know how refreshing their water is.
God knew that we needed a Lamb which could take the sins of the world away, but until each of us realizes this and that we need Jesus for our salvation, each of us will walk right by without ever seeking Him to be our Savior. God has placed a Fountain of Living Water for us to drink from and it’s within our grasp, all we have to do is realize that we need Him and ask Him to come in and quench our thirst for salvation and forgiveness.
We live by His Word alone
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Matthew 4:4 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.4.4.KJV
Our Savior, Jesus the Christ
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
Luke 2:11-12 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/luk.2.11-12.KJV
A world without Jesus…
A world where Jesus was not born in Bethlehem? Because the Bible is full of prophecies concerning His birth, He had to be born! There is no possible outcome or future in which He did not come! We would not have a world worth living in if He had not been born. Even the Bible itself would be completely in error if He had not been born. A world without Jesus would be one without hope and without the possibility of knowing God…ever!
God loves us and it is this love which determined before the world was formed, that humanity needed a Savior. Our entire world and any hope of eternity would be shattered or rather it would’ve never been if our Messiah, our Savior, Yeshua, had not been born in this world to a virgin named Mary. Why am I posting this question on the very day which most people celebrate the birth of Jesus? It is just an imaginary, theoretical test for those who may read this to see if you can even imagine a world without His influence in it.
I cannot even imagine it in the least!
I can imagine, at least in a small way, how a world might have been without Adolf Hitler or even the attack on Pearl Harbor. The reason that I say this is because both of these have had worldwide consequences, just as the birth of Jesus still has an impact on the world even today. So can anyone comprehend how our world would be if Jesus had not been born?
I am a preacher and a student of the Bible. As such, I know that the Bible itself would be worthless if He had not been born because His coming was foretold as far back as the Garden of Eden. God said the “seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head and the serpent would bruise His heel”.
Since taking Jesus’ birth out of the history of our world would make the entire Bible worthless, many of the laws which are in the world today would be non-existent. Many, if not all, of the laws and even some countries, would not be if that were the case. The hope of eternity would never be a part of our lives and the entire world would be under Satan’s control which God could not and would not allow!
A world without Jesus the Christ in it would be a chaotic and terrible place to live. The lack of the Promise of His coming would not have given the Patriarchs any hope for Israel or their future. We would have no hope for eternity or salvation. This world would be one in which many of us, if not most, would not want to live in at all! Without the Promise of His coming, there would’ve been no reason to dry up the waters of the Flood from the world and there would be no reason to give mankind hope even in the saving of Noah’s family.
To shorten this narrative, there would be no reason to even begin the story of mankind if Jesus was never to be born. Which is why God did decide to intervene in history Himself and come to be born of a virgin, clothed in humanity and to take the sins of the whole world on Himself in order to give ALL of mankind a True Hope to look for and believe in.
