Category: A new life in Christ

“Our Father…”


“Our Father”. Do you truly comprehend the significance of those words? God is, collectively, our Father since He is the Creator. But…have those two words ever sunk into your consciousness enough to truly register their meaning? Consider this: Adam was God’s son and the father of humanity, and Jesus is God’s Son and our Savior but He told His disciples to pray to God as their Father too.

Why? Because we become adopted sons and daughters in God’s family when we accept Jesus as our Savior. We have His blood covering our sins. We are God’s children. So when you pray to God, Our Father, you are literally praying to the only Person in the universe that loves you as much as He loves Jesus.

Let that sink in for a minute.

You are loved by God! So much that He gave His Son to pay the penalty for your sins. Jesus died and rose again to be your Savior and to pay the penalty for every person on Earth. It is your responsibility to accept this gift through faith in Him and live your life to attain your maturity in Christ. Walking with Him every day, not just on holidays and on Sunday mornings. It takes discipline to wake up and tell Him “Thank you for today”. It takes perseverance to read and study His Word for thirty minutes every day. It takes prayer, asking Him to give you His wisdom from His Word, and the understanding to know how to apply it.

The life of a Christian or a saint, as they are referred to by Paul, is not an easy one. The devil is going to target you so he can trip you up and cause your witness to be stained in some way so that others won’t follow you to be more like Jesus. The only way for any of us to stand on those days of trial is to study and apply the wisdom that we gain from God’s Word. We won’t know it or be able to apply it if we don’t read it…daily.

We are living in the last days of the age of Grace. Don’t turn away from the call of God in your life. Seek Him out in the Bible. Learn about Him and His nature. Follow Him every day and keep His Word in your mind and your heart for your own protection and for your salvation too.

Live by faith!


Delight in the Truth


You are in a world of wolves


Can you reach them?


There are many people searching for meaning today. They want meaning and a purpose in their lives but don’t know where to find it. Can you reach them with an answer? Some of them are just kids, teenagers really, that have no idea where they are going. They are following the trends on social media and some are going in the wrong direction. Can you help them find their way? You would think that their parents could help them but most parents today seem to be just as lost as their children are. Even some who seem to have everything together on the outside are still searching and trying to find their reason for living. Why has this happened?

If you go back far enough you can find the answer to what happened, not only in our country but in the world itself. Some people think it happened when JFK was killed or when the Korean War was over, which has never actually happened yet. The 20th century had many points that you could call and even label as “life-changing” or even cultural changing. But the most dramatic change came after the decision to remove the Bible from our education system and then remove prayer from schools altogether.

Why do I call this point the most dramatic change point in the 20th century? Because it took the standard away. For most of the history of America, the Bible has set the standard of how to conduct yourself in life. It was studied in school for many years and before public schools were common, parents taught their children from the Bible as the primary textbook for reading. While it is true there have been many people in our past that didn’t like some of the moral teachings found in it, the Bible was still the book that our founders used as a guide for many of the laws and statutes. 

Without a moral standard, our country has slipped into anarchy and chaotic behavior in many areas. The most telling of which is sports and family values. There are few values left in our society because everyone seems to want to use their ideas for their standard. You hear many people saying “You have your truth and I have mine”. The problem here is that truth is found only in God’s Word. When we begin to make decisions based on our version of truth or to live our lives based on our idea of truth and justice, we’ve thrown God’s Word out and replaced it with our ideas of morality, justice and fairness and that makes us our own “god”. Think about this for a minute and remember some of the political speeches and newscasts in the past couple of years.

God’s prophecy of the end of the age tells of this time when people will make their own laws and forget God’s Law. They will be “lovers of self and idolators”. In 2 Timothy 3, it says this and more: 1 But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without the love of good, 4 traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having a form of godliness but denying its power.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek out Jesus Christ as their Savior and give their heart to Him, then live the rest of their life as a follower of Him. When the day comes when the Trumpet sounds, you will be called to be with Him forever.

The Lord is my Strength


Who was Jesus?


John said that He was the Living Word. He was the Word which was with God and Who was God. By Him, everything was made and He was with God from eternity past all the way into eternity future.

John 1:1: 1 In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through Him all things were made, and without Him, nothing was made that has been made. 4 In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Even talking about Jesus in the past tense affirms this. He was in the past, He lives in the present and He will be King in the future. Jesus is the Son of Man and the Son of God and according to the Bible, He is the Son of David by His lineage in Mary’s family and His Earthly father’s ancestry too. God had this planned from the beginning of creation. Jesus was referred to in Genesis as “the seed of the woman”. Why? Because God was His Father and He used Mary’s DNA to create the child that Jesus would be born into the world but Jesus didn’t have the sinful nature of a human father.

Jesus is the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament when you see the word capitalized. He is the Rock from which the water came to keep Israel alive in the wilderness. He was the manna from Heaven to feed the people while they were in the wilderness for forty years, the Bread of Life. So, why do we tend to discount Him in our lives today? Is it because we don’t want Him until we need Him? That could be part of the reason. It seems that most people want to use Him as a “genie” rather than dedicating their life to Him as a disciple. 

That is not how God wants to relate to us but it does seem to be the way we want the relationship to be. Most of us try to place Jesus and God in a “box” that we can take out and use when we feel the need and then we put the box up as we do with Christmas ornaments each year. The world around us and the people who don’t believe in Jesus as their Savior think that God is either a very mean judge or someone who can grant all of your wishes. 

God has never been like a “genie” in the Old Testament or the New Testament. We can’t command God to give us our desires now. He provides for us everything that we need not our desires and when your heart is regenerated by the Holy Spirit your desires become the same as His. Your life with Him should become more like His disciples’ lives were in the time that they .followed Him every day. We shouldn’t make our relationship into a once-a-week thing, it should be every day with Him. God loves each of us and He made a way for us to be with Him through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Please, don’t push His call away. Answer it and become His child by accepting Jesus as your Savior.

His love will never leave you


What can I do?


If you are a Christian, there are many things that you can do but should you do them? Sometimes you can truly ruin the witness you have by a word or something you do. Because when people see that you are a Christian, they notice everything that you say or do. What do you do when your life doesn’t show the evidence of a change in your life? When you claim to be a Christian but there’s no evidence of it, you are a true hypocrite.

So, how do you fix it? You need to seek the Lord in His Word and pray for Him to show you the Truth of your need for Jesus. If you’re not willing to do that then you will remain lost. Thinking you have Jesus as your Savior but living your life as a sinner proves that you don’t have Him.

If God hasn’t convicted you of your NEED for Jesus through the Holy Spirit, then you might never seek Jesus Christ for your salvation. So… what will you do? It’s all in your court. If you feel the need for salvation, then seek Jesus. If you believe that you don’t need Him then all I can do is pray for you.

Invest time in…


Any time that you want a relationship of any kind you have to invest some time in it. Nothing comes quickly that is lasting. Money doesn’t. Friendships don’t. Marriage relationships don’t begin with deep, abiding love. There is affection and hope and a friendship that should develop as well but eventually, love becomes deeper and more meaningful and not so dependent on feelings or things. This is also how a relationship with Jesus grows. By learning about Him in His Word, praying to Him for understanding and wisdom, and learning to follow Him in everything that you do.

A relationship with Jesus doesn’t come from one hour or so on Sunday morning each week. If you don’t seek Him on a daily basis in the Bible and go to church to learn more about Him on a weekly schedule, then you are missing out on so much. The disciples were with Him every day for over three years and even that was just the beginning. Marriage and a relationship with Jesus require the same commitment in your life but many people don’t look at either relationship with regard to a commitment.

You and I are required to be accountable in every relationship but our society today wants to choose whether we should be accountable or not. It seems that most people don’t want to be accountable for their relationships or for their actions on a daily basis. Whether we are accountable in this life or not, we will be held accountable when we are standing in front of Jesus when we come into eternity. Whether you like this idea or not doesn’t matter, God will hold you accountable for every word and deed in this life. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior then you are still accountable for how you conducted your life after you became a Christian.

While it is true that your sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, your witness of Him and the change brought into your life by Him is still a part of your life. We are required to tell others about the wonderful things that Jesus has done for us and if you don’t tell someone when you have the chance you will still be held accountable for how you did it or not. You will have to explain why you didn’t tell someone who may not know Jesus as their Savior. How many people have you been around every day that need to know Jesus as their Savior? How many people have you been in line with or encountered at the store that you might have told about Jesus? Do you even think about telling others about Him?

When Jesus told His disciples to begin in Jerusalem and then take the message to the whole world, this is also our order to take what we have been given to those who need it. God has given us the most valuable gift that we could ever have in this life…salvation through Jesus Christ. Isn’t it worth giving away? The value that God places on each of our souls amounts to more than all of the wealth in the world and it was worth it to Him to sacrifice His Son to save us from eternal death. That gift that we have been given by our Creator and our Savior is worth giving away even if we only give it to one person who will receive it.