Category: Abide in Him

Love makes a difference


Sometimes I have heard people ask in a wondering tone, “Why did Jesus die for me?”. The simple answer is love. As John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life.”

It is the love of God which restrains His wrath even now. It is the love of God which calls to those who will hear Him to come to know Jesus as your Savior and you will be forgiven. It is God’s love which keeps our lives and our world going and moving and being in this world where there are many who don’t want His love.

God sustained Adam and Eve perfectly for a time. He sustained them and their offspring even after they disobeyed His command about the Tree of Knowledge. God has sustained the universe and our little speck of a world since creation and He will do so until it is time to change things as it says in the book of Revelation.

Yes, love does make a difference. Whether it is God’s love for us or our love for Him and for each other, true love does make a huge difference. In our lives and the lives that we touch and in the work that we do every day, it is our love which makes a difference now and will make a difference to someone else who sees what we do or say. We won’t know about the effect that we have had on other’s lives until we meet them in Heaven one day.

A kind word, holding the door for someone, paying for their meal when they didn’t ask you to, thanking God for your meal when you go out to eat, all of these things are little things but God can use them in ways that we can’t imagine.

Love is powerful and it does so many wonderful things in the world and in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Love comes from God and perfect love is His to give freely to each of us every day. Make sure that you give some away to your family and to strangers alike because you never know the impact it could have in their life and in yours too.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound….


Amazing Grace! We have been given His Grace toward us and for us. Not because we deserve it, because we don’t. God gave us His Grace through Jesus Christ long, long ago because He loves us! Not because of what we can do for Him but because of what He wanted to do for us. He wanted us to be with Him in eternity to praise and honor Him with glory because we love Him for what He did for each of us while we were still sinners, even before we were born, even before the world itself was made…He loved us enough to come draped in human flesh so that He could reconcile our sins through His death on the cross and then redeem us through His resurrection so that we would be with Him in eternity.

How sweet the sound of the words in the song by John Newton. John Newton, who was the captain of a slave ship for a few years and all the while God was working in him and on him. One day, he gave his heart and soul to Jesus and it changed him so profoundly until he had to sit down and write one of the greatest hymns that the Christian world has ever known. Not because of the melody but because of the words and the meaning behind them. This song is a sermon of love…God’s love for us and our love for Him because He loved us first!

“That saved a wretch like me”; John Newton could hear the slaves singing spiritual songs in the hold of the ships that he was part of their crew before being made captain on another ship. It was those songs and the conviction which came by them that made him write the song that we still sing today. Because God loves us even as wretched sinners and He loved each of us enough that He sent Jesus, His Son, to die on a Roman cross in order for us to live in eternity with Him. He didn’t have to do this but He wanted to do it because it was the only way to pay our penalty totally and completely so that we could be reconciled to Him and by Him.

“I once was lost, but now I’m found. I was blind, but now I can see!” We were all lost. Struggling through this life as sinners and we didn’t know that we were dead already because of our sins. But when the Holy Spirit touched our hearts and broke them so that we could see with our spiritual eyes, we would see just how lost we truly were. Then we would know that we needed Jesus as our Savior and we would seek Him out until we found Him and asked Him to come in and clean our hearts and our minds so that we could be His.

“Through many dangers, toil and snares I have already come. His Grace has led me safe thus far and Grace will lead me Home”; In life we do go through toil and snares which Satan has put in front of us each day, but God’s grace and His Strength will guide you and me through these times and carry us home to Heaven one day. Seek Jesus out for your salvation so that you will be lead home to Heaven one day because He is the only pathway to Eternity. John Newton knew it, Billy Graham knew it, and the Bible tells us about it, all that we have to do is give our life to Him and walk with Him until that day comes when we will be taken home to be with Him.

Broken…


Are you broken?

Do you feel broken sometimes? 

We are very much like the pottery which God’s Word tells us about.

Isaiah 30: 14-15

14 It will break in pieces like a potter’s jar, shattered so that no fragment can be found. Not a shard will be found in the dust large enough to scoop the coals from a hearth or to skim the water from a cistern.”
15 For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel has said: “By repentance and rest
you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence — but you were not willing.”

In Jeremiah 18

The Potter and the Clay
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Go down at once to the potter’s house, and there I will reveal My message to you.”
3 So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was shaping from the clay became flawed in his hand; so he formed it into another vessel, as it seemed best for him to do.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6“O house of Israel, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? declares the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

God can do, with us, as He pleases. He can do all things without our consent in our lives but the most useful we are to Him is when we are submitted to Him and are obeying Him. Can He break us in order for us to be more submitted to Him? Yes, He can. Will He do this? If He has to He will but I don’t think it is His preferred way of working with us.

God is not a tyrant in that He has to be mean to us in order to get us to do something. He would rather work with us in conjunction rather than having to allow things to happen in our lives which will force us to fall to our knees in submission to Him. So, does God break us sometimes in order to get our attention? I believe He does this sometimes, but it isn’t because He is mean, it is more likely because we are being stubborn and not listening to Him.

God loves His creation and He cares for each of us and He wants the best for us but during the time which we are feeling broken, we may not feel like He cares for us. Sometimes it is during those broken times when we feel down or depressed that we feel that the only way to go from there is up. We should be looking up and keeping our spiritual eyes on Jesus so that the time spent in those low places doesn’t last very long.

Make sure that you are centered in Jesus with Him as your Savior because the times in which we are living are unpredictable and we are not guaranteed tomorrow. So make sure of your eternity while you are here in the present because it is during this time is when we can respond when we are prompted by His Spirit.

The problem with worrying about those problems, whatever they might be, is that it makes us seem to be a practical atheist. We worry about things because we don’t think God will take care of it. The problem with that is this: He will take care of it only when we give the problem to Him completely! Not a portion of it for Him and then we will take care of the rest. Give the pain and sorrow to Him totally so that He can take it and do what He does with problems! He turns them into opportunities to show His glory for your good!

Many times in our lives, when we are going through heartache from the loss of a loved one or our job or anything which causes us to question God’s intentions, we should not question Him with a disrespectful spirit. We should, however, question Him as in “What is going on, Lord?” or “Why is this happening?”. God will allow us to ask a question of Him but not with an attitude of rebellion toward Him. We want to know why we are being broken and the answer could be that He wants to make us a little bit better than we were. Just as a potter may see something different after he begins work on a pot or a plate and he reforms it into something more useful or more appropriate. God is our potter and He can do exactly that as well.

Sometimes these changes come about from periods of hardship and personal pain and depending upon the amount of change that He wants to see in our life it could be considerable or it could be just a little discomfort. Worrying our way through these times can cause them to last longer because we are wanting to help God get us through them. But…He doesn’t need your help in changing you. Truth be told if you try to help Him change you the problem may last a lot longer than it would have if you had stayed out of it.

Knowing this, why do we worry? Because God doesn’t fix our problems when we want them fixed, He fixes them in His time and in His way. This is when the Scripture comes into play in our situation, “Be still and know that I am God”.

What would you give up?


To follow Jesus, the disciples all gave up something. Their livelihood, their reputation in some way, virtually all of them let something go in order to follow Jesus and they did so willingly.

A man from about 140 years ago once said this: “Beware of no one more than yourself, we carry our worst enemies within us.” Charles H. Spurgeon

Sometimes when we think we have given up a lot in order to follow Jesus and be useful to Him, we really haven’t given up much at all. On top of that, we are our own enemies because we can convince ourselves of things which we haven’t done or shouldn’t do even when God has called us to do these things.

So…what would you give up?

Would you go on a fast for a few days or maybe a couple of weeks, drinking only juice and water? I have done it myself but it was nine years ago, right before I was called to preach a few months later. I had to pray a lot but I was also working full time at a computer shop, so being away from home and food and cooking made it a little easier. Just work, drink water and go to the restroom a lot. Then after a week, it got easier and so on. I am not bragging about this because it truly was hard to do without all day and then come home and smell supper being cooked. I actually made it through about thirty days with juice and water and some protein drinks made with water (I know that last was kinda cheating). But after three weeks without solid food it is hard for your mind and your will to push back hard enough. The good thing about it, I lost thirty pounds!

Would you give up watching TV? I think this is even harder than fasting from food. I have heard of people who don’t even have a TV in their home and that’s great! I’m sure they don’t have computers or smartphones either. Although I could save a couple of hundred dollars a month cutting off the Internet and satellite TV. I don’t want to be without my phone though, just for emergencies.

What else could you and I give up? Snacks? Candy? Coffee…no, scratch that. Chocolate…can’t do it because it is in the same field as coffee.

Truthfully, we are our own enemies because we will listen to those voices which pop up in our mind. We think that they are our own ideas when they could be suggestions from Satan. The more we listen to them, the more influence they have over our lives. We can also talk ourselves out of doing things which we know God has called us to do. We become our own worst enemy because of this and sometimes we will even talk ourselves into doing something, thinking that it is the Holy Spirit talking to us.

If you don’t believe me just think back over your life and find those schemes or whatever you want to call them which didn’t work out so good. You heard about an “opportunity” or a “hot tip” and you thought “What will it hurt to give it a shot?”, “Who am I hurting but my own bank account?” I’ve done it, you know someone who has done it or you have done it and tried to forget about it. You mind and your thoughts are easy for Satan to manipulate because he’s been doing it for thousands of years. He knows where your buttons are and he know exactly how hard to push them so that it is tempting the first time and then it becomes a bit more and pretty soon…well you get the picture. It’s just like any of the temptations which he messes up other people’s lives and yours too, if you’re honest.

It is hard to push those ideas and temptations away when you are tired or hungry like Jesus was when He was tempted, but He used the Word of God against Satan and we have know it well enough to do the same thing. We will never know it though, unless we read it and study it every day, year after year. God’s Word is full of encouragement and heartache and wisdom and promises, but we need to know them so we can use them in our every day lives. Here is the challenge that I am putting here:

So…can you give up about fifteen minutes each day to read and pray about one chapter in God’s Word? Then do it again tomorrow and the next day until you’ve finished the New Testament. Then start on the Old Testament and do the same thing because after 21 days, reading God’s Word will have become a habit and it will be a habit that your heart and soul will truly miss when you miss one or two times.

Truth is NOT relative!


Jesus said that He was the Way, the Truth and the Life. So…make sure that you find the Truth in Him! Find the Way to Heaven through belief in Jesus as your Savior! You will find eternal Life through Him into Heaven. The simple way to make sure of your place is to seek Him in your local church or through a Bible study group. When you feel that subtle conviction from the Holy Spirit, you will need to sit down and follow a few steps (but not necessarily in this order).

  1. Lord, I admit that I am a sinner and I need You.
  2. I am asking for Your forgiveness for my sins and for you to save me from an eternity in Hell. (I repent of my sinful behavior)
  3. I believe Jesus died and rose from the grave and paid the penalty for my sins so that my relationship with You could be restored.
  4. By faith, I invite Jesus Christ into my heart and my life. From this time forward I want to live in a loving relationship with Him and I receive Jesus as my Savior and Lord. In Jesus’ name I thank you for all that you have done for me, amen.

God loves each one of us and it shouldn’t really surprise us. I mean, He had a hand in each of our lives even before, long before we were born. He put our DNA together on atom at a time so He knows exactly what your personality is and what you can do. Far better than even we know ourselves! That is the most amazing thing about how awesome God really is! Is it really so hard to believe that the Creator of the universe knows how many hairs you have on your head? Knowing this, is it unusual to think that He has cared and does care for you and everyone else who will come to know Him?

I pray that anyone who reads this will look up a Bible if they don’t have one. If you do, dust it off and start reading in the New Testament from John to Romans and you will find the Lord Who loves you and you will find that you will come to love Him too.

Cast your worries on Him


God has loved us as His children since before the world was a world! He saw our frail and fickle ways long before the first sin was committed, but He loved us anyway.

Jesus said that we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of it’s own. Seek His strength and wisdom in your time of need during those days when nothing seems to be going right. He can give you enough to get through it and then some.

What are you looking for?


Many preachers and teachers today are taking God’s Word out of context and molding it to fit their own “gospel” of wealth and prosperity. Why are there so many people drawn to this type of teaching? Because they want the wealth and the health without the “take up your cross daily and follow Me”, meaning that they don’t want to give up their “old life” for a better one in Jesus’ name. Everyone seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. But that is not what the Bible teaches and it is not what Jesus taught either.

People who teach this are using quotes from Scripture but they are taking them out of context. Jesus said “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The abundant life which Jesus was speaking of is one of spiritual abundance here and now and then you will be given so much more than you can imagine when you are in His Presence in Heaven. Jesus was not speaking of eliminating poverty with wealth here on Earth although many teachers of this “gospel” claim that is exactly what He meant.

Especially in Africa. They see all of the wealth of those of us who live in “the West” and they point to all of the good things which we have been blessed with. Much of the wealth and health that our country has enjoyed is because of the support and defense of Israel in the past 80 or so years. God blessed us because of His people, period. Not because we are or claim to be Christians. In our culture we do try to help others as much as we can and it is that giving nature that points many people toward our countries borders.

America has been a light to the world because of our faith in God and the fact that our laws have always been based upon the laws which God gave to Moses. We should always keep His laws and His message in the forefront of our country and its citizens. I pray than all who read this will give their heart and their life to Jesus so that one day I may meet you in Heaven.

Rejection, fear, and uncertainty


As human’s we do not like even ONE of these. From our family or our friends and certainly not from God. But why would we worry about feeling these emotions from God? The main reason that we feel these emotions in our relationship with God is actually because of Satan himself. God has never rejected us. Why should we be afraid of God? He isn’t going to strike us dead if we don’t do something, right? Feeling uncertain about your relationship with Him is also a tactic of Satan. Jesus said that all we had to so was to believe in Him and in the Father Who sent Him to save us from our sins…that’s it! Believe in Jesus and God the Father for your salvation. No hoops to jump through. No certain number of people that you have to tell about Jesus. He did all of the work on the cross in order to pay for your sins and nothing that we try to do can add value to our salvation.

Satan is the instigator and has been since before Adam or the Earth was created. He was a consummate liar then and he has gotten better at it over the thousands of years since then. Satan can make us believe a lie about God or Jesus or any part of the salvation which is freely given by God’s grace through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

We don’t have to listen to those suggestions which Satan places in our head and in our mind, but many times we do listen to them. If you look it up and read about God in the Bible, you will see that He may make some people afraid of Him but He only did it because of their hard hearts. They wouldn’t listen to His instructions, His commandments, so He had to get their attention just as He gets our attention at times. He knows that we are hard-headed and stubborn and sometimes it takes more than reading a few scriptures to make us know that He is serious.

For some of us it will take a bit more than reading a scripture to realize what is being said to us. Many times it may take a sickness or a death in the family to really get our attention, but God will use that to His advantage. God loves each of us but He also knows exactly how much it will take to get our attention and to keep it focused on Him. Some people will blame Him and they will move away from Him but that isn’t a surprise to God. He knows exactly who will hear Him and follow Him and who will not. Regardless of our intention to follow Him or not, God still loves us. That is just His nature.

Amen

Profound wisdom


Don’t read the title and think that is how I feel about the words that God gives me because I really don’t feel that way. I just know that there is no way that I could come up with the words and the sermons that I preach at my little church without His input by the Holy Spirit. If that makes me a fanatic or a “crazy Christian” then I totally own that.

God created the Earth and the entire cosmos out of nothing and I do believe every word in His account of creation. Because God is the embodiment of Love which we can’t comprehend and everything which has breath praises Him in some way every day. My post today is not a very big one or even a very profound one but if you think about it…it makes sense.

God created man, Adam, from the ground and formed him with His hands. Then God blew the Breath of Life into Adam and he became a living soul. Look at two words, which I have found this by a friend of mine on Facebook: EARTH and HEART. Spelled with the same letters but only the H moves. Now here are two more words which God uses in the Bible to get us to “be still and know that I AM God”…LISTEN and SILENT, again same letters different arrangement.

God tells us to listen and be still (silent) to hear and know that He is God. The Earth is our home and it is the heart that God judges and looks at in order to know you. Simple but powerful wisdom contained in similar words with the same letters just arranged differently. How awesome is our God?

God really loves you!


I found this on my Facebook page and I thought that more people should read this today so they will know that God loves each one of them.

The boy put his winter clothes on for the cold and told his father:

“Ok dad I’m ready”

His Dad, the pastor, said: “Ready for what?”

“Dad, it’s time to go outside and distribute our flyers.”

Dad replied: “Son, it’s very cold outside and it’s drizzling.”

The child looked surprised at his father and said: “But dad, people need to know about God even on rainy days.”

Dad replied, “Son, I’m not going outside in this weather.”

With despair, the child said: “Dad, can I go alone? Please!”

His father waited for a moment and then said: “Son, you can go. Here’s the flyers, be careful.”

“Thank you dad!”

And with this, the son went out into the rain. The 11-Year-old walked all the streets of the village, handing out the flyers to the people he saw.

After 2 hours walking in the rain and in the cold and with his last flyer in his hand, he stopped in a corner to see if he saw someone to give the flyer too, but the streets were totally deserted. Then he turned to the first house he saw, walked to the front door, touched the bell several times and waited, but no one came out.

Finally the boy turned to leave, but something stopped him. The child turned back to the door and began to touch the bell and pound the door strongly with his knuckles. He kept waiting. Finally the door was opened gently.

A lady came out with a very sad look and gently asked:

“What can I do for you, son?
With radiant eyes and a bright smile the child said:

“Lady, I’m sorry if I upset you, but I just want to tell you that God really loves you and that I came to give you my last flyer, which talks about God and His great love

The boy then gave her the flyer.

She just said, “Thank you, son, God bless you!”

Well, next Sunday morning, the pastor was in the pulpit and when the service began he asked:

“Someone has a testimony or something they want to share?”

Gently, in the back row of the church, an older lady stood up. When she started talking, a radiant and glorious look sprouted from her eyes:

“Nobody in this church knows me. I have never been here, even last Sunday I was not Christian.

My husband died a while ago leaving me totally alone in this world. Last Sunday was a particularly cold and rainy day, and it was also in my heart; that on that day I came to the end of the road, since I had no hope and didn’t want to live anymore.

Then I took a chair and a rope and went up to the attic of my house. I tied and one end of the rope to the rafters of the roof; then I climbed onto the chair and put the other end of the rope around my neck.

I then stood on the chair, so alone and heartbroken, I was about to throw myself off the chair, when suddenly I heard the loud sound of the door being knocked.

So I thought: “I’ll wait for a minute and whoever it is will go”

I waited and waited, but the door knocking was getting louder and louder every time. It got so loud that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

So I wondered, who could it be?
No one ever comes close to my door or come to visit me!
I released the rope from my neck and went to the door, while the bell was still ringing and the door was still being knocked on.

When I opened the door, I couldn’t believe what my eyes saw, in front of my door was the most radiant and angelic child I’ve ever seen.
He’s smile, ohhh, I can never describe it! The words that came out of his mouth made my heart, dead so long ago, come back to life, when he said with the VOICE OF CHERUB: “Lady, I just want to tell you that God really loves you”

“When the little angel disappeared between the cold and the rain, I closed my door and read every word of the flyer.
Then I went to the attic to remove the chair and rope.

I didn’t need them anymore. As you see. Now I am a happy daughter of the King.
As the direction of the boy, when he left, was to this church, I came personally say thank you to that little angel of God who came just in time and, in fact, to rescue my life from an eternity in hell. And replaced it with an eternity in God’s presence. “

Everyone cried in the church.

The Pastor came down from the pulpit to the first bench of the front, where the little angel was sitting; he took his son in his arms and cried uncontrollably.