Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, And for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfieth the longing soul, And filleth the hungry soul with goodness. Psalm 107:8-9 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.107.8-9.KJV
Category: A new life in Christ
Bad days…
God is with me even on my bad days. I don’t feel like doing anything or writing much but He has inspired me to do it anyway. Why? Because He is my Savior and my Friend. He is Life and the Author of it, so whether you are feeling down or depressed or just “not feelin’ it”, He is still there with you every step of the way. God loves us whether we are good or not and He can bring our lives to the point of being even better than they could be without Him.
So…truly with Him in your life, there are no bad days just days where you don’t feel as “up” as you did yesterday or the day before. That’s the best way that I can describe it. One of the performers on AGT in the past few years really touched my heart when she came on. Her “stage name” was Nightbirde. I say was because her cancer came back before she could make it to the finals and she passed away. But her spirit was infectious and happy even with cancer hanging in the background. Her advice after her audition was this: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before deciding to be happy”… Nightbirde
The only thing that I would add to her advice is that “You can’t wait until life is great to feel joy”. Joy is the giddy cousin of happiness and you can feel it even when you don’t really feel happy.
The Lord is merciful
The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: Neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:8-12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.103.8-12.KJV
The world around us doesn’t think that God is merciful, especially during times of war or famine, or economic chaos. Most of the time, the world wants to blame Him for their troubles, whatever they may be. God doesn’t need to explain His actions or His inaction in any situation. Sometimes in the past, He did tell His prophets why He was doing this or that but He usually did this because He wanted the Israelites to know His reasons.
Did God feel the need to tell them why He was allowing a famine or why He was withholding the rain? God told them the reasons for some of His punishments because they needed to know why they were being punished. Usually, it was because they had disobeyed His commands or His commandments such as when they were worshiping other gods rather than Him. Moses had told them many years before that they would do these things and that they would be punished but most of them had forgotten all of those warnings.
God’s Word tells us what happened in the past so we will not make those mistakes today. Yet, many people in the church still look at the Old Testament as an outdated document that we don’t need to read today. The same is said about the Constitution of the United States. Our history and the history in the Bible are there to show us what could happen if we make the same mistakes.
Jesus came to be the sacrifice that would take care of ALL of humanity’s sins. He paid our debts so that we could become the adopted children of God. To be able to have a relationship with God for all eternity.
Seeking Joy!
Life, as a Christian, can be described in many ways. For some, it is a journey toward a joyous reunion with your Savior. For others, especially those who don’t want to believe in Jesus as their Savior, it represents a drab and dull existence that they have no intention of getting involved in. Have you ever thought of what a joy it is to live with Jesus as your Savior on a daily walk with Him? Why do I use the word “joy” rather than “happiness”? Because joy is a state of mind that doesn’t require outside stimulation to attain. Happiness is an emotion that is fleeting and never permanent.
“The joy of the Lord is my strength” is an expression of joy from the Lord toward His people when they were brought back from captivity and were able to live in their land and worship Him in their Temple again. Why wouldn’t He be joyful? God is joyful every time someone repents and turns to Jesus for their salvation. That is why Jesus said that the angels of God rejoice over one sinner brought to salvation!
God loves every one of us, but He doesn’t love the sinful lives that we lead here on Earth. Until we repent and turn away from our sins and give our hearts to Jesus, we are still lost in our sin. When you feel the Holy Spirit touch your soul and your heart letting you know that you need Him as your Savior, don’t turn away from Him. You may not get another chance and it is during this life that you must choose. There are no second chances after you die. You will stand before Him and give an account of your life and why you didn’t choose to follow Jesus.
After you have given your life to Him and you know that you have salvation in your heart, the joy that you feel will never go away. Every time you think about eternity and your life with Jesus…a smile will come to your face.
We are called to serve in freedom
Counting down
Life, as we have known it over the past few decades, is soon coming to an end. The first couple of decades of this century has been pretty hectic and enjoyable to a certain extent. Yes, there have been some terrorist bombings and quite a number of shootings but for most of America, this century has been pretty good. We never did win the war on terror but that is because there are no winners in a war that has religion as its driving force. The main point that I am getting to about the “count down” is that everything is going according to God’s plan.
If you have read Matthew 24 or the book of Daniel and some of the first few chapters in Revelation, you can see most of the prophecies coming true to some extent every day in the news. Why do I point this out? Because there are few people in our nation who are paying attention to the comparison between the news and those books of prophecy that I mentioned. We truly are counting down toward an ending that I believe will arrive much sooner than we are ready for.
Are you ready for that day? When the dead in Christ will rise to meet the Lord in the air and those who belong to Him and are still alive will join them. When that happens, the economies of the world will crash. There will be many who will wonder what happened and there will be a few who will still be here that will know exactly what happened. If you believe that we are in a recession now, just wait until many millions disappear without a trace.
Can you be ready for this when it comes? If you give your life to Jesus and follow Him today and for the rest of your life then you will be ready for that day when it arrives. Is there any other way to get ready for the taking away of the church? NO! Belief in Jesus and following Him as your Savior is the only way. Nothing that you try to add to it will make any difference. God has made this easy but so many want to “help” Him with their salvation. There is nothing that we can add to His work that He completed on the cross and in rising from the tomb.
Our efforts are only useful when we have given our hearts to Him and the service that we do after that only adds to our rewards in heaven. We can’t help God save us or to consecrate our lives more by accepting Jesus as our Savior. Reading the Bible, studying it daily so we will know His voice, and washing our minds with the pure water of the Word every day are the ways that we can become mature in our faith and become more like Jesus.
Seek Him in everything that you do. Look for ways to let others know that God loves them and then show it by your actions as well. Be His disciple daily so people will see Him by your words and your actions so they might want the relationship you have with Him.
Faith comes by hearing…
Believe…
How can I come to Jesus?
How can I come to Jesus? I am a sinner and have been doing these things for most of my life. Why would God want me?
Because God knows who you are and he has known you since before you were born. He created you, placed all of your talents and abilities in your DNA, and brought you to the place where you are for a reason. Because there is someone possibly in your family or someone you work for or with that is also unique to God and you are the only person who could bring Jesus to them. They will likely listen to you more than they would their parents or other friends.
God can take your faith, even if you think it is weak, and use it to touch someone with the love of Jesus. You may not have to speak to them at all. They may see you saying the blessing over your meal at a restaurant and realize that you have something that they need. Not money or possessions but a friend in Jesus Christ and they want that. God has used people to be prophets and priests who were unacceptable in society but He used their willing hearts to touch kings and kingdoms.
When you read the Bible from cover to cover, you find that the genealogy of Jesus had people in it that were outside the family of Abraham. Rahab was a harlot in Jericho but she is part of the genealogy of Jesus and there are many in His family line who murdered people and many other types of sinful things. But God still placed them in Jesus’ lineage because He can use anyone’s ability and talent to bring His purposes to fruition.
John 3:16,17 is a very powerful verse: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
If you will believe in Jesus, like the thief on the cross did, and repent (move away from) your old sinful habits so you can walk with Him for the rest of your life then you will be saved. It’s so simple yet some people think that they have been too bad. Nobody has ever been turned away from salvation because of what they did if they were willing to leave it behind and follow Jesus’ teaching from that point on. Your heart will be changed and you will be completely new in Christ. Everything that you do is ordained by God and nothing has ever caught Him by surprise.
What are you doing for Him?
What are you doing for Him? Have you ever wondered about your life as a Christian? We usually ask God for our provisions, our needs, and our problems. Do you see the pattern here? We are called by God, prompted by His Holy Spirit to give our hearts and our lives to Him as our sacrifice to Him because of His grace toward us through Jesus’ sacrifice. We are supposed to give because He gave His only Son’s life for you and me.
Yet we have the audacity to claim Jesus as our Savior and then pray for our selfish desires and our problems without a thought for His requirement of us being His servants and His disciples. And we expect Him to answer our prayers right now! Not next week! How arrogant we are. Can you see what I’m trying to illustrate here?
Your life, as a Christian, should be centered on doing the work that we have been called to do by Jesus. What is that exactly? First and foremost it is being a witness to those around you at home or at work or even in public. Remember, Jesus told His disciples to go and tell others about Him and what HE did for them. That same command is extended to each of us today because people need to know about their Savior. If you and I don’t tell them, how will they know?
When I was lost, the only reason I went to church was that I had no choice. My mom went to church on Sunday and I had to go with her. I had been in church for as long as I can remember but when I became a teenager is when I began to rebel against my “expectations”. I’m not going into all of the details of my early life but I was a part of a “broken home” as they called them in the 70s. It isn’t uncommon today but back then it was. I didn’t get into drugs much but alcohol and a little “weed” were my friends or so I thought.
When you accept Jesus as your Savior, you are supposed to move away from your old self and follow Him into your new life. I thought I did this for a long time but I kept drinking and smoking for a long time. I was doing things that a born-again person isn’t supposed to do. It wasn’t until I became a father twenty-two years ago that I really began to reach out and seek God for my salvation. I had been baptized a couple of times but all that did was get me wet but I was still lost.
It has taken twenty years of study and seeking God to bring me to a point where I feel comfortable telling others about my Savior. I even served as a “lay-preacher” for almost ten years and there was a lot of growing in Christ that happened during that time as well. What is my point? It is this: If you truly belong to Him, you should be telling others about Him.
Don’t back up or think they will be offended. Some of them may be but they still need to hear it because you might be the only person who will tell them. God can use your talent to touch those around you and sometimes you are the only person that can get His message to at least one person in particular. It may be someone in your family or someone you work with but they may not listen to anyone else but you and your story. Plant the seed of your story in Christ so that they may decide to turn to Him as well. You may never know if they gave their heart to Jesus until you see them in Heaven but you may be surprised by how many you did influence that you never even spoke to.
