I think that many people who believe in Jesus truly need to stand up for their faith when it is questioned. Many believers don’t do this. Eight out of ten people who attend church seem to believe in Jesus but they don’t tell anyone else about it. The other two people do. They take their faith in Jesus and they told people about it. So twenty percent of of people who profess to know Him actually do because they show it to others. Take a look at this video and take it to heart. Then make sure that someone hears the message that you believe in your risen Savior because He died for your sins. He made way for you to be forgiven and changed so that you can take His message to everyone you meet.
Our God is able to give you the strength even when you think it is gone. Seek Him for your eternity and for your healing today.
Some people might think that what happened in this instance was just coincidence, but God is able to do anything even when there are people in the room who do not believe in Him. The foolish people of this world think that we are foolish because we believe God’s Word and they don’t. Even Satan and his demons know Who God is and they know that He is real! So if God’s adversaries know and believe in Him why do we who are created in His image tend to move in the opposite direction from belief?
Seek Jesus for your salvation so you can know for sure where your eternity is because this world is temporary but your salvation and your home is in Heaven. All you need to do is believe in Jesus to receive it and repent of your sinful ways. Ask Him to come into your heart and clean out all of the “old stuff” and place the Holy Spirit in there so that you will be a “new creation in Christ“.
His goodness is always available to us because He loved us from before Time began. He will never forget you and He will always be near you regardless of how far you try to get from Him. When you are in need of anything and there is no way that you can provide it…He can.
Why did the people of the early church believe so strongly in Jesus and the offer of forgiveness and eternity so deeply they were willing to be killed because of it? Because they had eye-witness accounts of His ministry and most of all their account of His resurrection from the grave! What He endured for our atonement was enough to kill any man within a few hours if not before He was nailed to the cross. He wasn’t finished yet so He stayed alive until it was finished and when it was, He said so, “It is finished!”, and He gave up His Spirit. No one took His life, no one killed Jesus, He died when He was finished and He gave it up willingly.
If someone today had the message which He brought so long ago and they were being filmed for TV and someone shot them three times in front of the country, killing them. Then before the autopsy could be finished, they got up and showed themselves to the doctors and nurses and the world…would you believe in them as the Messiah? This very scene will play out one day but it won’t be Jesus but a false savior when it does happen. If you haven’t given your heart to Jesus then you will possibly see this “false savior” who would claim to be the so-called “savior of the world”. This person is the anti-Christ, the false Messiah and he will deceive many who are alive on that day.
The resurrection of Jesus is such a powerful witness that many people would die for their faith in Him and His promise of eternity. Life was in Him, true eternal life not some promise made by “just a man”. If you have access to a copy of the Book of Martyrs I would encourage you to read it. It is not an easy read because some of the descriptions are very graphic. But the people that you read about beginning with Stephen and continuing on into our present day had their hope in Jesus and they believed in Jesus for their Savior so deeply that they were willing to go through being crucified or burned alive or trampled by animals or killed and eaten by wild animals. No one dies willingly for a lie. God loves each of us and we have a message to take to the world. That message is: He is risen and alive! His Word is true and He is coming back one day soon, Amen.
Like Mary at the tomb knew that it was her Lord and Savior when He spoke her name because no other person could express their love for her like Jesus. She felt it, she knew it was her Lord. Jesus calls us to become adopted into the family of God as His adopted brothers and sisters. God loves the world’s population regardless of country or ideology or skin color which is why Jesus came to pay the penalty for ALL of our sins and that penalty was not only His death but complete separation from His Father which He had never known before!
Jesus, our Savior, did this because of His love for humanity, for all of mankind, and yet He was rejected and still is in many countries. This begs the question, “Why is Jesus still rejected today?”. Is it because of the exclusive nature of His offer of salvation? My personal opinion is “Yes, that is the reason people of other faiths reject Him”.
Why? Because they don’t like being convicted of their sinful nature and their daily lives reflecting that. They live as if there is no tomorrow and mostly do whatever they feel like doing as long as they don’t hurt anyone. In some cultures, it doesn’t matter if they hurt someone because of their faith, especially if it is different or contrary to the dominant faith in that place. But, have you ever wondered how they would feel if they were the ones being ridiculed and spat upon because their faith was not the socially or politically acceptable faith?
God’s voice brought the cosmos into being at His command. Isn’t it a wonderful privilege and an honor to be able to study God’s Word in order to learn more about Him and His requirements for us? I do believe that having a written record of His statutes and laws and all of the poetry and wisdom that is contained in this Book is actually the best education that anyone can have. Reading it and studying it helps us to know His voice and how He sounds so that we will know for sure when He does speak to our spirit. We will know that it isn’t our ideas or our voice but His!
Coming to know Jesus as your Lord is one of the easiest and hardest decisions that a person can make. But it is also the best decision because it directly affects your eternity. Many people think that there are many rules and regulations to follow if you want to be a Christian but there is really only one requirement and that is to believe in Jesus for your salvation. Because unless you have been convicted of your need for a Savior, you won’t seek Him at all. But when you do feel that you need Him there are no hoops to jump through in order to be ready for it. Just believe that He died and rose again to pay for your sins and the penalty for them. Once you do that, your heart will change and you won’t be the same person that you were before.
You will do the same things which the apostles did or you will be able to do them and you will want to do them. Tell others how He changed your life and made you into a new creation with a heart that wants to do what He did and what Peter and John and Paul did. Tell others about this wonderful person that has saved you from the pit of hell and changed you so that you can say with confidence that “Jesus is my Lord and my Savior”. The thief which asked Him to remember him when He came into His Kingdom believed in his hour of need and he knew that he deserved the punishment that he got, but he asked Jesus for His forgiveness anyway…and he got it! Don’t turn away from the only Person who can save your soul.
Are you trusting the government to “fix this pandemic”? Does anyone in our government even know or have an idea what this really is? Yes, it is a disease with similarities to the flu but no one knows the period of infection or the transmission vector other than through the air by droplets or possibly by touching a surface that may be contaminated. As far as we know it wasn’t engineered by anyone it just started infecting people but the strangest part of this virus is that it can cross over to animals like dogs, cats, even tigers. There aren’t many viruses which can do this. Did it catch us by surprise? I think it did. It began in China last fall and it is contagious enough that with our mobile population it has spread all around the world in about six months.
When will this virus go away? Nobody knows for sure. It may level off for a while during the summer months, but it may come back this fall or during the winter, we just don’t know. But…God does. Is He responsible for sending this virus into the world? I don’t know, but it’s possible. He could be using it to get our attention and get us to turn back to Him. We’ve pushed Him and most of His laws and His Word out of education and from most of our public places like courtrooms. When Israel did that, God used the Babylonians and the Syrians to come and enslave them until they turned to God and begged Him to send them a savior.
Sometimes this would work for a while, but usually in a short period of time they would be right back to worshiping other “gods” and He would have to get their attention again. Why are we so hard headed when it comes to following and worshiping God? We will do it for a while and do it faithfully, but when the hard times ease up we usually move to the point of, “We’ve got this, God you can go back to your house until we need you again”. God provides the air that we breathe and the water that we drink and every bite of food that we eat. Where in that sentence do you see a place where we DON’T NEED GOD!?
I know that many of you think that all of those things which I listed have been available to us for thousands of years so why should you thank God for them now? Okay, hypothetically, lets say tomorrow you wake up and you are having a really hard time breathing or getting enough air to let you be able to move. Would you blame God or would you seek Him out and beg Him to help you? If the doctors can’t find a reason for it and can’t really help you except by putting you on a respirator, don’t you think you should be talking really seriously to the Creator Who formed you in the womb? Since He is the only One that can help you at this point? Now how wonderful does that air feel when you take a breath?
God does love each of us deeply and He has provided everything that we need to live. He also provided a Savior to atone for all of your sins and mine so that we could be with Him in Heaven one day. You don’t know when your appointment will come to meet Him but it is coming. It could be tomorrow or next week, are you ready to meet Him? Do you know Him? Does He know you as a friend and an apostle? If you can’t answer those questions positively and without doubt, then you need to be seeking Him in His Word and through honest, heartfelt prayer too.
If you meet Him before I do, I pray that you will be known by Him as a “faithful servant” even if it was for a day or two or twenty years even. You need to make sure while you can in this life.
The bluebird knows it is April, and soars toward the Sun and sings. –Eben Eugene Rexford (1848–1916)
When you consider the birds of the air or even the fish and other animals in the wild, all of them depend on God for their lives. Their food and their shelter are provided for them by the grace and power of God. Now you can say that it is just instinct or the way that these animals are taught by their “parents” but that doesn’t work for many of them.
Think about sea turtles. They live for many years but they never actually know their mother or their father. They are born from an egg which has been laid in the sand by their mother but when they are born she is not there. They have to frantically race to the sea and many of them don’t make it. Birds scoop up these little ones by the hundreds before they ever enter the sea and even then they are small enough to be eaten by some fish. God provides them with the knowledge to find places to hide and to find food because this is where so-called “instincts” come from.
Why am I speaking about animals? Because God cares for them. He knows when one of them comes to the end of their life and falls to the ground or dies in the sea or anywhere they are. Since God cares for and knows about their death just as much as He knows and cares about each of us. He cares and knows about each of us in a more intimate way because we are made in His image! We are given talents and gifts by Him to use for His Kingdom in this life until our time is up. God knows your day of birth and He knows the day of your death, but in between those times we are supposed to work for Him in every area of our life.
Some of us push Him away for a while because we think that we can do it on our own, but we can’t. Many of us hear His call on our life and just ignore it and we have many problems come up in our life. These problems usually come in the form of sickness or some other problem for which we need His hand or His strength to get through. Sometimes we will turn to Him and follow Him after these things and sometimes we become angry and push Him away. Don’t consider that you can outsmart God, He knew which reaction that you would exhibit. So if you’ve pushed Him away, He will try another one.
God uses every area of your life for His Kingdom. You don’t have to be a pastor or a deacon or a missionary…just be you. God created each of us with a unique gift or ability which nobody else has and He can and will use that gift for His Kingdom and glory even if it doesn’t happen until your last day on this Earth. Each of us has a date with destiny and we will meet God on that day. It is up to you and your decision to give your heart to Him even if you only have a minute to live…don’t waste it.
God knows when a sparrow falls to the ground lifeless and dead. Since He cares enough about His creation to notice when a small bird dies, don’t you think that He knows what you are doing and how your health and welfare are? God gives each of us the ability to get up and serve Him each and every day and until He decides that your ministry is done you will live until that day!
Our lives and every word that we speak as Christians is part of our ministry. Everyone who sees you and knows that you are a Christian can see Him in your steps every day. If they don’t know you well enough to know that you are a Christian they may still watch you to see how you react to every situation. Christians react to every problem and trial in a very different way from those who don’t know Jesus. Why? Because we know the One Who holds tomorrow so we don’t need to worry about it.
Jesus said that “I will never leave you nor forsake you“, God said the same thing to Moses and Joshua. There is nothing that we cannot accomplish in His strength when we allow Him to guide us each day. Do not worry about this virus which is all over the world today, God will limit its path and will stop it when it has accomplished the thing which it was put into the world for. He uses disease and other trials to bring us closer to Him which is exactly what our country and those in the world who don’t know Him truly need this day.
Pray this prayer: Heavenly Father, I know that you know what is going on in my life. I need your strength to get through this and your provision for my daily life. Please touch those in my family and those around me who are also going through this trial. It may be this virus or cancer or some other trial but with your strength and your Presence in my heart and my life I know that everything will turn out just fine. Thank you for giving your Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice on the cross and resurrecting Him so that I can have the hope of eternity if I believe in Him. I ask you now to bring that belief to fruition in my heart and help me to become a child of yours forever. Forgive me of those sins that I have done and help me to walk in the newness of Life everlasting. In Jesus’ name I pray this prayer, Amen.
In the world today we have all sorts of “sides”. There is the Left and the Radical Left, then there is the Right and the Radical Right. Then of course you have Centrist and those who try to walk in or near the center but still leaning to the Right or the Left. Even in most movies which are popular there are stark contrasts between the hero and the villain, good and evil, light and dark. The same can be said of the Bible and the ideologies espoused in many other religions. So what can we do? Is there really a right or wrong way to live and be and act…or do we just follow our own ideas so that each person has their view of right and wrong regardless of how society perceives it?
If we followed our own version of right and wrong regardless of the way it makes others feel there would be total anarchy and riots and possibly wars all over this land and elsewhere. But this is not the way to be according to our actual rule book given to us by God Himself. The Bible teaches that we are to love each other as we love ourselves and to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
So…why don’t we follow these simple rules?
Because these rules came from Jesus’ gospel. It isn’t that they are hard to do but many people who think that they are Christians don’t like to be limited by rules even as simple as these. God knows which person is actually a Christian believer and who is not. Does it matter? Yes, because many will come to the throne one day claiming that they have served the Lord for many years and He will say “Depart from Me because I never knew you“.
God knows the heart of each person and He sees exactly what each of us thinks and does in our lives, whether we do those things for Him or against Him. God is present here and in Antarctica and in Russia and France and Saudi Arabia and not just in those places but in places which may not even know or recognize Him at all. He is the Creator and the Father of us all but most importantly He is the Father of Jesus the Christ Who came to Earth two thousand years ago to fulfill the will of God that we would have a chance to know Him and be in His Presence into eternity. His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, touches our hearts and shows us the kind of people we truly are and it is then that we know that we need Jesus as our Savior.
That is the time of conviction and knowledge that we cannot be saved on our own or by our own choice but by Him and through Him we can come to know Him Who loved us so much that He gave His Son for our sins in order that we would be adopted into His family. So many in the world today don’t want to accept this and they are more afraid of a virus than they are of the Creator. He is the creator of it, whether it is the flu or a corona virus or the common cold and it is by His power that we will overcome it or not. If we do not then we go to be with Him. If we do, then we can tell of the wonderful saving grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!
There are always two sides to every decision and every fence and every road that you take, your future will depend upon which one you choose to follow.
God’s Word is full of pictures in words about how the Christian should learn to follow Him. The problem is that for most of us we’ve never had anyone in our lives to show us and explain what the baby steps are and how to progress from there. If you have ever listened to a sermon on TV or at a church revival or even at a friend’s church you have likely wondered exactly how to become a Christian and then what do I do when this happens? Where do I go from this point?
Baby steps are the first options which we all have. When we are learning to walk, we don’t wake up one day and just run around the house and down the street. It is the same way with believers. You don’t come down the aisle one day or night and repent of your sins and then you understand all of the theology and mysteries found in the Bible. God doesn’t dump the Old and New Testaments in your brain and tell you to get out there and make Him proud! There have been some days that I wish He had done that but we aren’t capable of going from a non-believer one day and then have the ability to understand all of the mysteries of the Bible on the next day.
Talk about a mind-blowing experience! That would truly put us in the asylum for sure.
The problem with becoming a Christian is that many times you are on your own. Once you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, most churches expect your parents or friends to help you to learn about your faith and what you should do with this new life which you’ve been given. Is this the way it was supposed to be? Well, yes, actually it was because that was the way that God had told the Israelite people to teach their children about Him and their history from the books of Moses and their Prophets..
All of us have a responsibility to lead and teach, not only new Christians but each other. All of us need to be helped along the way. Learning more about our faith and about our Savior and the message which He taught the disciples during the time that He was with them. Saul who became known as Paul even went into a secluded place to learn from the Holy Spirit before he became the evangelist to the gentiles.
Why do I bring this up today? Because many of us have heard the gospel preached and we might have given our heart to Him but we are left on our own to “work out our salvation” by ourselves and sometimes we get in the muck of our own minds. What do you mean by that? Well, work out your salvation doesn’t mean that we must work for it but it does mean that we have to study God’s Word to learn more about Him and what He taught the disciples so that they could take His good news to the world. Humans, you and me, tend to overthink things whether it is learning from Scripture or learning to cook or even learning how to play a guitar. Your mind and your thoughts will get in the way like a puddle of mud does when you are walking or riding in a car or on a bike.
Since we are in the process of being quarantined at home these days it is a perfect time to learn more about your Savior and to have Bible study sessions at home. Get into God’s Word while there is time on your hands and learn more about Him and the love that He has for you because He has loved you with a deep, abiding love since before the world was created.
According to the apostle Paul we have a place in heaven even while we are still here on Earth. In Ephesians 2:4-6 says it this way: 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
When we pray to our Creator, God, and we do so in faith there are times when we may see the floor of Heaven. When you get a glimpse of the floor of Heaven, you are seeing the golden streets which make up the streets of Heaven. It is likely that you will think it is a dream or some sort of illusion, but those don’t usually happen while we are awake. Can I prove that I saw this? No more than I can prove that my feelings are real or that my imagination can conjure up worlds while I read a book, so I would say that there is no way for me to prove any of this. But the look of reality and the solid feel of it is all that I can describe to anyone. So call me crazy or insane if you wish, but I have experienced this at least once maybe a couple of times.
How I wished at those times I could just take another step and be there with my loved ones who have gone before me. One day soon. How are we to respond to someone who claims to have this happen in their life? I can tell you that most people are not going to tell anyone about this because they will be afraid of being sent to a mental hospital. Only those of us who know how real it felt and can still feel, at times, to have gold bricks as pavement under your feet.
While it is true that we won’t experience the actual feel of gold under our feet until we get there, a vision from God which feels real is the best you can ask for while on this side of the veil. Remember, we are only separated from God and our loved ones by the veil of life here and the different and glorious life that we will experience in God’s Presence. I am looking forward to the day when that trumpet sounds!
If you haven’t given your heart to Jesus, it is time to get busy seeking Him for your Savior. If you have ever felt the Spirit calling you during a service or when you feel convicted about your life and your mistakes then you truly need to come to a saving knowledge and belief in Him for your salvation. I pray that any of you who read this will turn to Jesus for your salvation soon because I don’t think we have many more years to wait. Seek Jesus as your savior while you have the time.
The Living Message of Christ 