Faith…do you have it?

Without faith it is impossible to please God. So…do you have any faith in Him? In Mark chapter 9 there was a father who had come to Jesus’ disciples first because his son had a demon who afflicted him. This boy had this going on for many years and the apostles could not cast it out. When his father saw Jesus he said something that you don’t hear or read in the Bible very much. The father told Jesus that his son had been this way since childhood and he said “If you can….”.

Mark 9:14-29 14 When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him. 16 And He asked them, “What are you discussing with them?” 17 And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.” 19 And He answered them and said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!” 20 They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. 21 And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 “It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” 23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. 28 When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” 29 And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

The boy’s father didn’t know Jesus very well at this point but he did ask Jesus to heal his son and help him with his unbelief. God can do all things as long as we believe in Him and don’t doubt that He can. But, mustering up enough faith to see something done that you have trouble believing that it can be done is something else entirely. Yet, God can help you with your faith in ways that you don’t reallize at first. Our God and Savior is AWESOME so don’t consider for a moment that He can’t do something that you ask of Him because He can!

I pray that everyone who may be in the path of the storms in our country and all over the world will seek His strength and guidance in these troubled times.

Who is in charge?

In our society today even those who are supposed to be in charge have doubts about who is really in charge. Some aren’t sure of their ability. Some are blocked from doing what needs to be done by those who want to see them fail. Some people just want to find someone to blame for their problems and they don’t care what they do or say about someone to switch the blame to someone else. In our country and our world at large it seems that nobody acknowledges that God is really the One Who is in charge.

In Colossians chapter 1 Paul writes this: 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Our Creator, Redeemer and Savior is God and also Jesus Christ in whom we live and have our life now and into eternity. If you have given your life to Jesus and follow Him then your Spirit lives in Him and through Him. God’s love for us and especially the Jewish people is a love which cannot be measured by any human measure. We cannot understand it. He is above us and yet when Jesus came to live among us, He personally lived as a man so that He would know our weakness and our frailties and would be able to identify with each of us in a personal way.

Some people foolishly think that we are able to “rise above the human condition” with no help from anyone. If you look at the history of every country in the world, you can see that it just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t matter what political system is involved, mankind will be the animal that we think he is. While it is true that humanity can be and do good things for a while, historically it won’t last very long.

We can be more like Jesus Christ if we live according to His Word and teachings. The Holy Spirit comes into your heart and changes your “condition” so that we are able to rise above but we must live in His Word. Reading it, studying it, praying about it and what we can do through Him to be more like Him. Without the Holy Spirit we can do nothing. Our “natural inclination” is to be selfish and seek pleasure for our own purposes and do whatever it takes to “get ahead” in life. But by reading and studying God’s Word, not man’s rules and ideas, we can move toward being better than we could be on our own IF the Holy Spirit is allowed to work in and through us.

Don’t be the animal that “evolution” says that we are. God did not design us by using an ape, we are made in God’s image! More people need to see Jesus in and through our actions and our lives so that they will want to know Him too. The future of humanity is written in God’s Word and we should be living through Jesus and He should be working through us to bring the whole world into the future that God has prepared for it.

What makes the difference?

What makes a difference in a person’s life? I don’t mean materially like having a lot of money, what I am speaking of is an eternal difference. Now, there are some in our country today who would ask, “What do you mean “eternal difference”? Well, according to God’s Word which, isn’t read very much in America anymore, all of us have an eternity to look forward to after we die. Some of us won’t like it there at all. They will see their eternity as a punishment and a prison. Well, it is.

You see when you live your life like the devil then your eternity will be to live in eternity with the devil. Now during this life, I have heard many people say that in hell we will be having a party all through eternity. But that is not the way Jesus describes hell. He said the smoke of their torment rises for eternity and that they will be thrown into the lake of fire with Satan and his demons. A lake of fire doesn’t sound like a party to me. Especially when your eternal body is capable of feeling pain even though the lake of fire can’t kill you.

The difference that we make in other lives and in our own life can only come by one Person, Jesus Christ. He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith and it is His Spirit which remakes us into a child of God. We cannot do this transformation on our own. There is no amount of money or time or work, which will miraculously make us righteous in the sight of God. Only belief in the Son, Jesus Christ for our salvation will accomplish this task. We do not choose this on our own because even when you have been in a revival tent or meeting if you feel that you need Jesus and you go down front that decision may be because of your friends going down or some girl going down.

When the Holy Spirit touches your heart and breaks it so that you know that you need Jesus regardless of who may see you or what your friends might say. Nothing will keep you from going down and making Him your Savior. God’s Holy Spirit will move you to make that decision and you will make it. Sometimes it may take a few more prompting touches from Him but you will get down on your knees and give your life to Jesus.

What does all of this have to do with making a difference? Because others will see the difference in you and they will want to know what happened? Your life and your way of living changed and someone will want to know how they can have the peace that you have. They will hear about your life turning in the opposite direction from where you were headed and they will see a difference in you. Some may not see it as a good thing and that’s okay but there will be others who see the change and they will want what you have found.

When your life changes like that then you will make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe even more than one person. Then they can go out and make a difference and the effect will keep going from there. God can make one person…one seed sprout into a field of new growth for His Kingdom. It only takes a spark to start a fire if the right kind of wood is there. Your “spark” comes from the Holy Spirit and the fire that He starts in your heart is what other people see. Once they see this change in your life, they will want to know what or Who it is that made this change.

Make sure that they know it was Jesus Christ Who brought you to this place in your life.

Endless love for…

We have heard songs for this and we’ve prayed for it to happen to us but until you realize that you already have it…it never really sinks into your conscience. God has loved every one of us since before the first blade of grass grew in Eden. He has known our weaknesses and our strengths and where and when we would make mistakes and He loves us anyway. Even when we refuse to listen to Him or we turn away from Him for a time and do our own thing…He still loves us. Feeling loved or unloved? Seek God in the Psalms and Proverbs. His love shines so bright that our own Sun cannot be bright enough to make a shadow.

Endless love. The kind of love that lasts not just for a lifetime but for eternity is the love that God has always had for each of us. Will He show this love to us while we are still alive? Yes, and He does it every time you wake up to a new day. When your day goes your way until you get home that was God making your day smooth and productive. God’s Spirit comes to live with you when you accept Jesus as your Savior and He is with you during the good days and the bad ones. He is never any further from you than a breath and a prayer. If you are hurting, the Holy Spirit can fill in the blanks that you can’t pray because of grief or the loss of a loved one. He knows your pain but He will give you the strength to get through it today and tomorrow and the next day too.

The gifts which the Spirit brings to your life will help with so much and add to your life and your enjoyment of it. God does so much for us each day and most of it goes unnoticed because He takes care of little things before they become big ones. Sometimes we ask Him to do something for us and He knows that we don’t need it or that it would cause problems for us later. He answers those prayers by not answering them. We don’t understand His logic but we aren’t supposed to understand Him. He’s God our Savior, our Protector, our Creator and our Redeemer. What more could you want or need?

God watches over the righteous

For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. 1 Peter 3:12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/1pe.3.12.KJV

When you pray, God hears your prayers. If you are a sinner, the only prayer that He will hear is your prayer for forgiveness and repentance. After that, He will be near you every step of the way. God never turns away from a sinner if they are sincere about turning away from their sins. Only a prayer for forgiveness and repentance from a sinner will be answered instantly, if it is sincere. Just like trying to quit smoking or drinking will not work unless you truly mean it. God knows what is in your heart and He knows what you are thinking. It cannot be hidden from Him.

God does care about and He watches over all of us, sinner and saint alike, and His will for all will be accomplished because His will cannot be undone. The world around us thinks that they can change the future by their actions but the future is in God’s hands and it will happen the way that He says it will in His Word. Look to His Word for your peace and your salvation through Jesus Christ.

Are you following Jesus?

When Jesus called His disciples, He asked them to follow Him and they did. Some of them learned a lot from following Him and listening to His teachings. One of them was dissatisfied with how things were going. He wanted a King for Israel and one who would defeat the Romans and push them out of Israel. But…that was not the reason for Jesus’ mission at the time.

So, are you following Jesus or are you hearing the preacher tell you about Him and then going your own way? Believe it or not, there are more people who are in church just listening than there are who are following Jesus every day and every step of the way. Some who read this will want to know how to follow Jesus every step of the way and here’s the answer: read the Bible each day, praying that He will speak to you about your day and your problems.

God will do that if you are serious about reading it and learning from it exactly Who He is and His love for you. Even if you only read a chapter each day it will focus your thoughts on Him and you will have those Scriptures to help you in your time of need. The thing is: when you read God’s Word, the Holy Spirit can and will speak to you through it. You will never read the same verse twice and get the same message. It will always be a different more useful message even if you’ve read it 100 times!

Walking with Jesus is the same today as it was when the disciples walked with Him. Get up from your bed and thank Him for giving you one more day to live and learn from Him. Go through your day thanking Him for even the little things which seem insignificant but they touch your life or your thoughts in some way. Thank Him for your food and your job and the ride home. Be in a worshipful mood of thankfulness all day because He has given you this day to learn from Him. Thank Him for your day before you go to bed and thank Him for a home to sleep comfortably in because there are so many who don’t have even that “luxury”.

Make this a daily habit and your life will be so much more complete and secure.

Seek and you shall find…Him

Some people wonder where they might find the Truth of Jesus…but will you believe in Him? Some may ask why should I believe in Him? You can choose not to if you wish but that choice will impact your eternity. Why not seek Jesus and the Truth of God’s plan for salvation? It takes faith and the will to believe even when others don’t want to. There are so many choices today, so which will you choose?

We believe in entertainers, professional athletes, money, position, power, money, but none of these can bring you salvation. Regardless of how much money or power or position you may have, when you die it means nothing. Not one penny of your fortune or any part of your fortune goes with you after you breathe your last breath. But if you have faith in Jesus and believe that He is the Son of God Who died for your sins then you will have eternal life with Him! What kind of price could you place on that promise? It is given to you freely and without cost. For the price of your faith and your belief in Him you get a prize which no one on Earth can give you at any cost!

But many people today are burning God’s Word, the Bible, which teaches about Him and how we might come to know Him. They don’t want the good news which is found in its pages. They are afraid of its Truth and all of the wisdom that is in its pages for anyone to read and believe.

Why are they afraid?

Because God’s Word is more powerful than anything that mankind has ever done and all you have to do is have faith and believe in Jesus to claim it. Consider for a moment…the most powerful bomb that we have created. I’m not speaking of the bombs dropped during World War 2. I am speaking of the hydrogen bombs which, thankfully no one in their right mind would drop. The ones dropped in Japan were rated in the kiloton range, meaning that they were equivalent to about ten thousand pounds of TNT each. The hydrogen bombs which we have today are equivalent to millions of pounds of TNT each.

God created stars which put out that much power in one second! Our own star puts out that kind of power in one second and it is considered a dwarf star! It is only approximately 900,000 miles across and there are stars out there that God created which make our Sun look like the Earth next to them in size. Yet with all of His power and majesty and wisdom creating everything that is in this VAST universe, God still knows how many hairs are on your head and mine and everyone else around you. He even notices when a sparrow dies and falls to the ground. Why?

Because He is God, Jesus is also God and the Holy Spirit is also God. Three distinct Persons of the Trinity but still God. The Spirit moves us to know that we are sinners in need of salvation and gives us faith to act on that to seek out our Savior which is Jesus the Son so that we can be reconciled to God the Father

We try to put God in a box of our own choosing so that we can relate to Him. That is why you hear some people say that “my god would not be so cruel” or “my god understands me and we have an arrangement”. Satan has convinced them that they can do this and god will understand when we go fishing or hunting or stay home to watch the ball game. Because they claim that “I can worship from my living room or from a boat or my tree stand”. Have you ever praised God from your boat or a tree stand? I’ve never heard songs of praise or prayers in the woods during deer season. Unless they were something like “Lord, let me get that BIG buck and I’ll be in church every Sunday”.

You can’t bargain with God like that! He knows your heart and He knows exactly where you will be next Sunday and it won’t likely be in His house.

Jesus said:

Ask, Seek, Knock

(Luke 11:5-13)

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

God loves you!

The title of this is “God Loves You!”. Why would I use such an old, tired, sentence as that? We all know that God loves us because that’s what the gospel says in John 3:16!

Our problem with this is that we know He loves us but we don’t live as if we love Him! However old you were when you came to the knowledge that you needed Jesus in your life and your heart, whether you were twelve or twenty or even fifty years old, that is supposed to be your spiritual birthday. But…have you grown any since then? Many people accept Jesus as their Savior and then if they mean it, they sit down and they read some Bible stories or a verse or two every Sunday. And that’s it!

That’s as far as they go. They don’t read the whole Bible. They don’t go to Bible study during the week or on Sunday night. They feel that they have their Jesus and they don’t need to know any more than that. All of this would be great IF they lived their faith and their salvation in front of everyone…every day! But most of us don’t.

Right now more people are leaving the church than there are attending church. At least when it comes to younger people such as 18 to 30-year-olds. They don’t feel connected to the church or they feel like they are being “judged” by the rest of the congregation. Some leave because they have friends who have a lifestyle that is frowned upon in Scripture.

When the church doesn’t teach young Christians how to live a Christian lifestyle, then how will they know? It seems that our problem is that we don’t know how to live the Christian lifestyle either. Most of us grew up going to church, especially in the South, and we might have walked down the aisle and gotten ourselves baptized by the time we were teens. But we did it mostly because Mom wanted us to or because our friends were doing the same thing. We didn’t know what conviction was or what the Bible taught about sins and their relationship to us. Most of us were just beginning to notice there was a difference between boys and girls.

In John 3:16-18 it says:

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Life today is hard enough for young people without being told that nearly every thought that you have is sinful. How can you look at a cheerleader without sending your soul to hell? When you are a young man or woman it is nearly impossible.

When most people read “young Christians”, they automatically think of age that is less than twenty years old. I am speaking of anyone from the age of 10 on up who has accepted Jesus as their Savior. Christians who come to know Jesus, regardless of their age, are as Paul described “babes in Christ”. They have just come to have faith in Jesus as their Savior and they need to be taught about Him and the life that they have in Him. Unfortunately, most are brought into the church and baptized and they are never given much more to go on other than read your Bible or make sure to come to Sunday school.

New believers need to have someone who has been a Christian for a while to teach them and help them find their way through the Bible. Explain some of the hard sayings in the Bible if they can and if not then take them to the pastor and try to clear up the “muddy waters”. This is one of the reasons why many people who join the church and say that they believe in Jesus for their salvation don’t stay long, in my opinion. Let them know that God loves them even more than their parents and friends do so that they will be eager to learn more about Him and their relationship to Him.

Who are you walking with?

In Genesis, the Bible speaks of a man who walked with God named Enoch and God took him to glory or heaven without him experiencing death. I don’t expect to be taken any time soon, unless it is time for it, but I do try to walk with God on a daily basis. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not bragging about my life. I know that I sin quite regularly even when I’m trying not to. But I do ask God to give me strength in my Spirit to at least be able to resist most temptations which come my way. Am I successful in resisting them? Not by a LONG shot! But…I do try.

Living with Jesus as your daily companion is the Christian lifestyle that we are supposed to be living. It is not easy to do although you might think that it is. Enoch did it so why can’t we? He didn’t have all of the distractions that we have today. Cell phones, the Internet, TV shows, movies, etc. can really get your attention away from the study of God’s Word and truly walking daily with Him.

Why do I bring this up today? Because you and I need to be closer to our Lord and Savior now more than ever. Not only is it a good idea but to have a real relationship with someone you have to get to know them. Attending church or a Bible study once or twice a month is not enough. Think about a relationship such as a marriage would work with getting together only once or twice a week and you get my point…it doesn’t work and it could be hazardous to your health.

It is the same with your relationship with Jesus. Being in a real relationship with Him is a learning experience because getting to know Him is only by studying His Word and prayer so that you will recognize His voice when He does speak to you. After giving your heart to Him and allowing the Holy Spirit to come in a truly change your heart is only the first step. Waking up daily and thanking Him for another day to learn about Him and actually following through with the learning part is the part which you have to work at day by day until it becomes a habit.

Many people get caught up in the hype of some “evangelists” who talk of the rewards of being a Christian. They try to sell you a deal and get you to partner with them to be more like Jesus. The truth is that there is no partnership other than being a born-again Child of God and you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for that except for giving your tithe to your local church. This tithe keeps the lights on and the other expenses of the church paid as well as giving the pastor a little bit of cash too. No one is getting rich by preaching and if they are then they are doing it wrong.

God takes care of us without the world’s trappings of wealth and the reward which will be ours in eternity far outweighs any retirement plan here on Earth. Walk with God and His Son, Jesus, and you will have all of the perks which come with knowing your Savior and your Creator as well.

On that day…

It won’t matter how much money you had in this life. It won’t matter if you won an Oscar or an Emmy or a Grammy. It won’t matter if you were the MVP at the Super Bowl or at the World Series.

What will matter is: Do you know Jesus as your Savior and does He know you? There is no gray area for salvation. It’s like being dead or pregnant, you either are or you’re not.