Why does God want us to be broken and humble? Because it is at that point we will be receptive to the calling touch of His Holy Spirit. At any other time we could ignore it or say “I’ll do that later.” The problem with that thinking is we might not have a “later”.
Life has a way of proving that we need God whether we want to believe in Him or not. I stuck my neck out for many years before I finally gave my heart to Jesus and actually asked Him to come in and make me a new creation. I found out I was going to be a Daddy and I knew that my life needed to change and that’s when I found out about the change that would happen if I gave my life to Jesus. From that point on I started reading my Bible and learning more about Him. Why? Because He showed me that I couldn’t be a Daddy until I learned how from Him.
In the seventies I felt abandoned and overlooked. I never told anyone this but that is how I felt all through junior high and high school. My parents had gotten divorced when I was about five years old and at the time, I felt or thought it was somehow my fault. No one at home knew what to tell me or say that could “make it better”, so my teenage years were my self-destructive years. I started drinking every Friday night and I didn’t drink beer, I could get whiskey or almost any hard beverage that I had the money for.
I had been to church and heard the sermons about God’s love but at the time it wasn’t much more than a fairy tale to me. It wasn’t real and I didn’t begin to believe it until later in my life. Much later.
The only reason I made it through my teens and twenties was because God wanted me to become someone useful to Him. That didn’t happen until I met the love of my life and we had a little boy. I had to come to Jesus because he needed someone who could be a father and a Daddy, and I was neither of those before Jesus changed my life.
It is true that God calls those who can be useful to Him but He also gives each of us the ability to be more useful than we could be without Him. I was reading and listening to Jesus teach about the lilies of the field and how God clothes them in splendor yet they will dry up and blow away. How much more will God change your life and mine if we keep our eyes on Him every day? If He cares for the sparrows and the flowers of the field, how much more does God love those He created in His Image?
Seek to know Him deeper every day because He formed you to be His if you will respond to His call when your heart feels it.
In America there hasn’t been a king for over two centuries, in fact, since we have been a country there hasn’t been a king, just a President elected by the people. But spiritually, America has been a bit on the fence when it comes to choosing a Savior. We are free to worship as we choose, so if we don’t want to go to a church or other religious place…we can choose not to.
But, God sent Jesus to the Earth so that we can be forgiven for our sinful actions if we will choose to believe in Him for our salvation. This belief must come with a deep commitment to follow Him and His teachings and to learn more about Him and the way God wants us to live. To do this we must study God’s Word daily and pray about what we read so the Holy Spirit can teach us more about our new way of life. The learning curve isn’t hard, but placing our faith in Him can be at first. We have been sinners without the Holy Spirit, usually for much longer than we have been saved. At first our old way of thinking will still be very much in control of our thoughts and that can only be changed by the Spirit and by reading and studying God’s Word.
One day in the future the church will be taken up and the world will be without pastors or churches for the most part. I beg you to seek out a church today and learn more about this Savior and the Life that He offers to everyone if we will seek Him and give our hearts to Him, turning away from our old life and living in the new way of following Him.
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
There are many decisions that I have made over the course of my life that helped me learn and grow. The first was when I joined the Air Force back in 1980. I gained confidence in myself and learned many things that are not taught in school. Then I became an EMT for a number of years and I learned a lot about how people treat each other in various situations. I’m not going to go over all of my life and the decisions that I made but the one that had the most impact was when my son was born and my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Savior.
I knew I couldn’t raise him without having a true moral center in my life and God agreed with me. He called me to be His and I hope I’ve been pretty good at following Him. Like everyone else I have stumbled many times but He has always been there to help me get back on the right path with Him.
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. Matthew 6: 9-13
Why can’t we pray this prayer in reverence and Truth today? Because our culture and our society don’t believe that God is Who the Bible says He is! People pray this prayer as if it is magic. It is a “model prayer”. It is the way we should pray all of the time. Not word for word but the form of our prayer. Yet, it is used in church and in many other places as THE prayer to pray but Jesus was teaching His disciples HOW to pray.
We are to give honor and glory to God first and foremost. Praying that God’s purposes will be done on Earth and that His Kingdom will come to Earth one day. God does provide for us every day but we should acknowledge it in prayer. He also offers forgiveness to us every minute of every day through the atonement of the blood of Jesus. We should acknowledge that God doesn’t lead us into temptation but He will give us the ability to resist it if we belong to Him. We should also recognize that the Kingdom is God’s and He has all of the power to accomplish His purposes regardless of our input and the glory belongs to Him alone forever. Amen
Living in this world today as a follower of Jesus is not easy at all. That is why we have to take this prayer into our hearts as a “model” of how we should pray every day. Live your life as if it is the last day that you have. Tell others about your Savior and what He has done for you because everything that you have comes from Him. Your job, your family, your home, your car or truck was given to you by Him because He gave you the talent and the ability to be able to afford them and take care of the responsibility of having them.
God loves you and me and all of mankind but He isn’t very happy with the way we have used and abused the world that He gave us to be the stewards of. He isn’t happy about the way that we treat each other either. So, one day soon He is going to come back and take His followers home and then He is going to teach the whole world exactly Who He is. I pray that you will learn that lesson before that happens.
Many people, pastors included, think that God stopped working after creating everything…He didn’t stop. He has been working behind the scenes and in every country, nation, government building, and office in the world. It doesn’t matter if it is a country that rejects Him and His message, He is still working in the lives of people everywhere. He is drawing them to Himself and bringing those who will come to Him into His family.
Sometimes we think that God is not in control because of all of the evil and hatred in the world but He is still there and in control. He protects those who know Him and those who will come to know Him. The land of Israel is His and the people there are His too, even if they don’t accept Him as their Savior and King. One day, they will. There are miracles every day that many people don’t notice but if you know God and how He works, you can see them. There are people who are alive today that wouldn’t have been alive if He wasn’t in control. There are places that would be in much worse shape spiritually if He did not have control of Satan and only allowed him to do whatever God told him to do and not do.
Life itself would not be possible if there weren’t specific parts of our world that He keeps in running order. He controls the Sun and the weather and everything around us but there are so many who do not see it. It wasn’t an accident that our planet was placed here. Jupiter and Saturn help keep many hazards from making a run toward us and God placed them there for that purpose. Scientists don’t want to acknowledge it but it is true. Even the moon protects us from many threats that we might never know about.
Jesus came to pay all of the penalties for the sinners of the world, past, present, and future. He did exactly that and then was raised on the third day giving us the opportunity to enjoy eternity with Him if we believe in Him for our salvation. God had this planned a long, long time before any of us were here and He loves us in more depth than we can understand. It seems that many people think that our universe was brought into existence by the “Big Bang” and God may have used something like that to begin but I don’t think it was fourteen billion years ago. The Bible says that God stretched out the heavens and that is why they are finding galaxies that are way out there but they look just like our galaxy.
God’s creation is awesome and all of His attributes are shown in it every day. From the blue whales on Earth to the rings around Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune, He created all of it to cause us to have wonder and awe at all of creation and for us to give praise to Him. Seek Him while there is time to do so because the age of the church, the dispensation of grace, is coming to an end. When it does, the whole world will know it and those who haven’t made Jesus their Lord will have to endure the Tribulation.
O come, let us sing unto the LORD: Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, And a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: The strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: And his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: Let us kneel before the LORD our maker. For he is our God; And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, As in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, Proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, And said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath That they should not enter into my rest.
Psalm 95:1-11 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.95.1-11.KJV
…if you want to see the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Dolly Parton
This bit of wisdom can be applied to many things. In life, in business, in your marriage, or in any other relationship if you want to see the beauty of it then you have to live through the tough times as well. This is something that seems to be missing in our culture and in the way that we, as a country, have learned to handle trouble. If you watch the news at all, you can see that we don’t handle trouble very well today. When there is an argument about anything, someone gets shot and sometimes killed because of the argument. Which was probably over nothing.
We have not learned, nor have most of us been taught, the power of faith and prayer and being submitted to God. In the last forty years or so church attendance has dropped quite a bit and with this “pandemic” many people have used it as the reason to just stop altogether. Why? I would think that during a time of trials we would need God even more. Some are choosing to stay home and “watch church”. Have you ever noticed how the entire family acts when this is done, especially today? Everyone has their phone out playing games or watching videos or texting. Nobody is actually paying any attention to the sermon on TV. They couldn’t answer one question about the sermon.
We, as a nation, have lost our most valuable resource and that is the time that we spend worshiping our Creator. Reading Bible verses is okay, but do you ask God to show you what they mean to your life? The beauty of a relationship with God is that He loves you more than anyone else and He wants to know you by what you talk to Him about and how you pattern your life after His Son. He already knows you in minute detail but He wants to hear you ask Him for the things that are dear to your heart. Not games or cars or a new phone every other year or so, but a real relationship with Him. Why? Because you are special to Him.
God created each of us to be like Jesus but He also gave each of us a mission that nobody else can do. Every father has a mission to raise their children to know Jesus by being an example of Him to them. They are to read the Bible and tell their children about what they find so interesting in God’s Word. We, as parents, have this responsibility given to us by God when we are called to be part of His family. We have a responsibility outside the home too. The people that we work with and the people that we meet should know that we are Christians without us telling them.
Jesus should shine out of our life in such a way that there is no mistaking that we belong to Him. Is this hard to do? For some it is, particularly at first. When you are a new Christian, you want to go around telling everyone about this wonderful Savior. But…your old friends just want you to come back and be like you were before. When you felt convicted of your sinful ways and you asked Jesus to come in and cleanse your life so you could follow Him, your heart was changed. You aren’t the same person that your friends knew. You are different. But you have to work as keeping this change fresh and alive. That is what Jesus meant when He said to “take up your cross and follow Me“.
We have to push the old thoughts and feelings away every day. Study God’s Word and wash your mind with the Living water of His Word so that your thoughts will become more like His. A chapter every day can do this, you don’t have to read a whole book in the Bible every day. But most new Christians are not even told that they should be doing this. They go down and accept Jesus, then get baptized and while they are standing there dripping wet and new in their faith…the church fails them. Most aren’t mentored into the Word, they are like a newborn child but everyone expects them to figure it out on their own. Would you do that to your baby? Think about what Dolly Parton said, “to see the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain”. Teach them, show them, help them to be more like Jesus one step at a time.
The Living Message of Christ 