He came for you…

He loves us as the Father loves us…completely and more deeply. Why did I write this in the present tense? Because Jesus is ALIVE and He still loves us just as God the Father loves us today! He didn’t die. At least, He didn’t stay dead. He was placed in a tomb but three days later He came out in the power of God and the proof of Who He truly was and is. Jesus came to bring salvation to everyone who is drawn to Him by the Father. To everyone who will hear and listen and believe in Him because He paid the price for your soul. The message which Jesus brought to the world is simply “repent and believe in Him” for your salvation.

Give thanks always!

In Ephesians 5:20 Paul writes: “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

During this time of year when we give thanks for the blessings of God which we have received do we think about why God has given us those blessings? Do we think about all of our needs that have been met, at times without us even asking for them?

We go through some trying times and many of us actually blame God for those rather than thanking Him for the strength to get through them. Yet, we are supposed to give thanks to Him because it is a commandment…not a suggestion. God loves each of us and whether we realize it or not we should give Him the glory for all that He has given us. Although many of us look at what we have and we think that we are the ones who got this thing or that thing when it is really God Who has given us the ability and the knowledge needed to do our jobs and be able to provide for our family.

Being thankful for everything is not hard to do, but it is difficult to give thanks to the right One Who provided for us. We have grown up in a world that teaches independence and individuality so we look at what we have as our accomplishments and not as gifts from God. Living in the world as it is today we look around and see that the world is so focused upon what each person wants and their personal idea of the “truth” and what is right in their eyes until any idea of looking at the bigger picture is lost. To many people, it seems to make no sense. Why would they want to consider their actions having an impact on the lives of many people in the world?

If they aren’t hurting others with the way that they live then why should they care about someone in another country having air pollution problems or problems growing enough food? We have become so individualistic until we live selfish lives and look at the world around us and we just don’t care about anyone less fortunate than we are.

Being thankful to God is actually the secret to a happy and productive life. So why can’t we live thankfully all the time rather than on just one holiday during the year? Paul wrote in Ephesians that we should be “thankful always” and that is why we seem to have trouble with this. Give thanks to God for your home and your family. Give thanks for your retirement or your job. Give thanks for your spouse and your grandchildren and for their continued health.

Thanksgiving is coming soon and we should truly give thanks to the One Who provides for us every day. Psalm 68:19 says: “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation”. Every day each of us gets a fresh basket of benefits such as the air we breathe, the food we have to eat, so we should never pray without thanking God.

Consider this: why should God give you anything else if you don’t even thank Him for what He’s already given to you? We should be leaving out some of our complaints in our prayers and be adding in more thanks for those good things which we enjoy! Like having food on the table and a warm place to sleep and clean linens and clothes to wear. We take many of these things for granted but in other parts of the world, not very far from where we live, there are many who would love to have even the things which we throw away.

In the Old Testament book of Exodus, Moses had to put up with all of the Israelite’s complaints and their whining about all sorts of things…but they weren’t slaves anymore. Many of them even wished to go back to being slaves because they didn’t like the conditions of their freedom. Moses had to plead with God many times to redeem the people from His wrath or they would’ve been wiped out by the God Who had saved them. They weren’t thankful for the manna which fed them every day. They weren’t thankful for being set free for very long.

We should be thankful for our freedom which was given to us through the suffering of Jesus on the cross. We are free from the burden of sin and it’s consequences if we have given our lives and our heart to Him. Yet, many times we begin our Christian life with Him and we are thankful for the burden being lifted and for a time we are very thankful. Then when temptation comes back and we slip or we feel that we are being wrongfully tempted we blame God for it. He didn’t tempt us but we want to blame someone and it is either Him or the Devil.

Be thankful for your life and all of the good things and the bad days that you have since many of our bad days would be welcomed by other believers who are in countries where they are persecuted much more harshly than we are.

This should be our motto for Thanksgiving each and every day.

God is not done yet

We are useful to God in many ways and our life is a work in progress. He can use our talent in many ways if we will follow his ways. But, you have to work with Him. Learn from Him and from His Word because if you don’t, you won’t know His voice or His wisdom.

Not one of us is born into our life on Earth or our spiritual life with Jesus knowing how everything works. We have to grow and learn as children and when we accept Him as our Savior we have to grow in His Wisdom and through the knowledge which is given to us through His Word. It is a process just like going through grammar school and high school and college. We are not born knowing how to add or subtract and we won’t know how to handle the hardships of life as a new Christian if we don’t read and study the Bible.

It takes commitment and determination to learn about the wisdom found in the Bible. Most people who call themselves Christians today only read it when they are at church. There are very few people who read it daily. Even if they do they aren’t reading it in a prayerful, answer-seeking way. Some are just reading it because they are trying to read through it in a year so it’s more akin to a college assignment than a religious commitment.

God uses many ways to bring us to the point where He needs us to be spiritually. Sometimes, He uses illness or a setback in our business or our finances. Sometimes it may be a death in the family which brings us to Him so that we will seek His answers to life’s questions. You need to realize this: He is never really finished with your learning. You will be learning and growing for many years into eternity. Just because we are given a renewed and glorified body and mind when we get to Heaven, doesn’t mean that He dumps all of the knowledge that you will ever need into your brain.

We are never “done” with learning or with life, if you are a child of God and have accepted Jesus as your Savior. God doesn’t have favorites but He does want a relationship with each one of us if we will follow Him.

One more, Lord, just one more…

That was the prayer of a man during World War 2 who was helping wounded men on the field of battle. It should be our motto and our prayer today. Lord, help me to bring one more into your family, just one more. Then go out and do it again and again.

Sometimes we celebrate one more day sober or one more birthday or even one more day without accidents at work. Why not celebrate “One more day to serve You, Lord!”? Be thankful for all that you have because it is all given to you by your Father in Heaven. Your blessings, your trials, your family and friends…everything good and not so good comes through Him either allowing it in your life or by His blessing you with it. Be thankful for everything and everyone in your life because they are here today but we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, so tell someone that you love them now, while there is still time.

We have lots of time, we think, but that isn’t necessarily the truth. God never promised us that we would have a set number of years to live. Yes, it does say that we may live three score and ten and by our strength we might reach four score years (for all you young folks, a score is twenty years). As we get older we may ask the Lord for one more year to serve or maybe one more day to be with a sick family member. One more…just one more. Seek to be useful to God for one more day and then ask for another and another. He may grant you those days until they turn into months or years. From that point you will be living for Jesus just one more day…just one day at a time.

That really is all we can do. Live our lives for Jesus and His message to the world one day at a time.

God is present in your past and today!

Jesus sees us as clearly in our darkness as He does in our light. Our vision may be limited in times of darkness and fear, but His is not. God knows your hard times and your weakness in those time but He is present in them as well. He said that He would never forsake us and He never leaves your side, even if you don’t know Him as Savior yet.

In Genesis 22: 4-8, Abraham was doing what the Lord God had told him to do. He was taking his son, Isaac, to a mountain to worship God. But, God has also asked that he sacrifice his son on that mountain and he was obeying God. In verse 4-8 the Scripture says: “Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again unto you“. Right there is the faith of Abraham. Because God had told him to sacrifice Isaac on that mountain but with his faith he told those young men that they would come again unto them.

Abraham wasn’t senile, he knew what God had asked of him but he also knew that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead if He allowed him to kill his only son. He didn’t know about the ram that would be there…yet. When Isaac asked about the sacrifice, Abraham again showed his faith in God by saying “the Lord will provide Himself a lamb for the burnt offering”. God did exactly that.

In our lives today, whether you are a Christian believer or maybe you are curious about salvation, God can supply you with the faith to believe and be saved from your sinful life. He has already paid the price for your soul through Jesus’ death and resurrection and all you have to do to receive it is to believe in Jesus as your Savior. There is no amount of money that you have to give, there is no amount of work that you can perform which will help Him in any way to complete your salvation because it is already complete in Jesus. God allowed His Son, Jesus, to be sacrificed for our sins even though we didn’t deserve the tremendous grace that would require and we don’t deserve His grace and love even now, but He loves us anyway.

God has prepared so many good things for us through the riches of Jesus and His love for us and yet many people think that believing in Him is just too simple. They believe that they have to help God save their souls. God created this entire universe with all of the stars and galaxies and planets ALL BY HIMSELF, He doesn’t need our pitiful strength or our tiny amount of money for anything. He does ask for our obedience and for our belief in Jesus as our Savior. It doesn’t cost us anything but the realization that we can’t do it all by ourselves…we NEED Jesus Christ!

Giving your heart to Jesus because you know you need Him to save your soul from hell is the easiest and best decision that you could ever make. Sometimes it is the hardest decision too, but consider the consequences of your eternity if you don’t. All of us have an eternity after this life is done, but your location depends upon your decision now, today. Jesus said that there are two paths to eternity, one is broad and many people find it and one is narrow and few people find it. The broad road leads to hell and the second death, the narrow pathway leads to heaven and an eternity with Jesus. Which road will you take?

Only God can forgive

Luke 5: 17-24

Jesus Heals a Paralyzed Man

17 One day while Jesus was teaching, some Pharisees and teachers of religious law were sitting nearby. (It seemed that these men showed up from every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem.) And the Lord’s healing power was strongly with Jesus.

18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus, 19 but they couldn’t reach him because of the crowd. So they went up to the roof and took off some tiles. Then they lowered the sick man on his mat down into the crowd, right in front of Jesus. 20 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, “Young man, your sins are forgiven.”

21 But the Pharisees and teachers of religious law said to themselves, “Who does he think he is? That’s blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!”

22 Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he asked them, “Why do you question this in your hearts? 23 Is it easier to say ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up and walk’? 24 So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!”

In this story, Jesus proved Who He was to the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, but they didn’t want to believe. The fact that He knew what they were thinking should’ve given them a clue and the healing should’ve nailed it down too…but they were blind to Him and His fulfillment of their prophecies. So why wouldn’t they believe? It was likely that they were jealous and it became worse with His fame growing.

God sent His Son to His people so that they would believe and be saved from their sins. A few did believe but there were many who did not, even with the miracles that He performed. Even when He raised Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb, many who saw this miracle did believe but when the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees were told of it, all they thought about was that Lazarus would have to die too.

Why did the religious leaders refuse to recognize Jesus for Who He was? Even the name Nazarene had been prophesied years before He came, but they refused to see it or were blinded by their jealousy and by Satan too. God is still using dreams and other means to get to those He is drawing to Himself, even in lands where Islam is the dominant religion.

John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. That whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life”. Seek Him out today! He is waiting for you to call on Him for your salvation, so answer His call on your life!

No one is worthless in God’s sight. You were worth God’s Son going to the cross so you could have eternal life!

Our Good Shepherd

In Psalm 23 David begins with “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”. There are many ideas and interpretations of that phrase but mostly it has to do with your Spiritual life not your physical one. The Lord provides physical food and the ability to do your job and get the things which you need, but the last four words do not mean that you will be wealthy. It means that you won’t be in need of anything beyond His will to provide it for you. God’s will overcomes all obstacles from disease and famine to relationships between Himself and you or your family.

That doesn’t mean that He overrules your choice or your right to choose because God doesn’t force His will on us. But He does provide for us in every way and in every situation. There are times when we don’t see His hand in our lives and we feel as if He has left us to fend for ourselves but God is still close to you and me. We are never truly alone if we are Christians. If you have rejected Jesus as your Savior, God is still close by but He isn’t as close as He could be in your life. Particularly if He knows that you can do something in His Kingdom that nobody else can do. God will keep touching your life until you finally realize that you need Him as your Savior.

God has loved mankind since the dawn of Creation and before. We will never know the depth of His love for us until we are in His Presence and even then it may be too much to take in, even with our glorified bodies. Jesus came to bring His message of love to everyone, Israel first and then the rest of humanity, but many people rejected His message and still do. Is it too simple or is it just simple enough? I don’t know. I do know that some don’t place much faith in salvation in which we don’t have a part in bringing it about. They don’t like “free” gifts from God. They would rather work for their salvation to help God save their soul but our works are not necessary because Jesus did everything that needed to be done, all we have to do is accept it and believe that He did it for us!

Salvation is a gift from God to us through our belief in Jesus for our eternal soul. We can’t save ourselves and our idea of working for our eternal soul is flawed because of our fallen state. Any righteous act on our part and apart from Jesus is nothing more than rags. Because when we do anything in our own strength to “help” God save us, we are stepping out of His will and into our own. God doesn’t need or want our help in redeeming us because Jesus already accomplished it. All we have to do is believe that He did and repent of our sinful lives so we can follow His footsteps to becoming more like Jesus every day.

God knows your heart

How many of us have considered the fact of the Scripture which says that “God searches the hearts of man”? What does that mean to us in the 21st century?

Many people seem to look at Christians and think that we are backward and that we follow a “god” in blind faith but that is not true. We have faith in God, the God of Creation, and we have the faith which says that we believe His Word and His Works on this Earth. It is not a faith that is blind, and although you can’t see God you can see the works of His hands all around you. Does He know you and me? Yes, He does! He formed us in our mother’s womb to be the people who we are. We were born to parents who could nurture us in the ways and knowledge of Him.

While it is true that some of us didn’t have parents who would do this, God knows our hearts and He will bring us into His service when it is time. For some of us, it will take a little while longer than others, but eventually, we will learn that we are special to God and our talents were given to us for a reason. Our abilities and our faith in Him will bring us to the point of being useful for His Kingdom. It took three years for the disciples of Jesus to learn enough about the Kingdom which He was teaching them about so that they could go out and tell others about His love for them. But the Holy Spirit, which Jesus sent to them after He ascended to the Father, worked through them and the church grew substantially during the first few years and continued to grow from that point on.

Is the church still growing today? Yes, it is although in some countries it is slipping a bit like it is in America. We have become complacent and apathetic in our pursuit of Jesus and the culture that we are living in now doesn’t think that God’s Word and His message are relevant today. Why is that? Mainly because we have been silent on the issues and outside the church. We haven’t been taking the whole Truth of God with us into the world. We come to church and get our fill of His wisdom on Sunday and then we leave the church building and our faith until the next time we meet.

Jesus told His disciples to be “fishers of men” but it seems that the church today has lost the meaning of that command. Making disciples of those we come into contact with is our mandate from God. God knows your heart and your sins whether you have confessed them or not. Make sure of your salvation in this life so you will have Life eternal with Him in the next one.

Do you live like Jonah?

In the book of Jonah, the prophet tries his best to run from God’s calling to take a message to Nineveh. Not because he doesn’t want to take the message, although that was part of it, but because he wants God’s judgment to fall on them rather than a revival coming to their country. He knows that God is merciful and He will forgive them if they turn from their sins and seek Him because of the warning that God told him to bring to the people of Nineveh.

Jonah 1:1-4 says:

1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me.”

3 Jonah, however, got up to flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard to sail for Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

The Great Storm (Jeremiah 6:10-21; Jeremiah 25:15-33; Acts 27:13-26; Romans 1:18-32)

4 Then the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship was in danger of breaking apart.

Wickedness or sin is lawlessness or transgressing the Law of God and it cannot be hidden or covered up, but we try to do this every day.

Proverbs 28: 13 says: 13 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

God is willing to forgive our sins regardless of their “size” because all sin is abhorrent to God and Jesus paid the price for our sins to cover them and forgive us of their consequences. We look at our sins and think that that “little white lie” isn’t so bad. Not nearly as bad as the man who has murdered someone at least. But in the eyes of God, even though murder is a more grievous sin, any sin weighs the same because it is a transgression of God’s laws. When you break one of His laws it is the same as breaking them all.

Any sin in your life that has not been confessed and forgiven puts a door or a barrier between you and God until it is confessed and forgiven. God warned Cain before he slew his brother that “sin is crouching at your door and it desires to have you, but you must rule over it”. Genesis 4:7

God will judge our unacknowledged sins (Romans 2:16), “God will judge the secrets of man by Jesus Christ”. I know it sounds like a harsh comparison for mankind to be judged according to the sinless Son of God but we, as Christians, are supposed to walk in His ways and seek to live a holy life. In our humanity and by our own strength we can’t do this but by reading God’s Word daily and carefully taking each thought into captivity we can be effective witnesses for Him.

Hiding sins, whether they are “small sins” or “Big sins”, isn’t possible because God knows your heart and your mind. Even if you haven’t given your heart and life to Him, when you stand before Him to be judged, every word and thought will be brought out into the open. That is a scary thing to consider since we rarely have complete control over our thoughts and many times we say things which we should’ve thought about first (but we don’t) and we end up with our foot in our mouth. In God’s economy and under His Laws, every sin weighs the same. We consider some as small and some as big but to Him they are all spots and blemishes on your record and they hinder you from enjoying life as He wants you to.

How far have you taken your faith?

In every place that you go, if you are a Christian, you take your faith and your beliefs with you. So make sure that you take Jesus with you every day and everywhere you go.

God loves each of us so much that He gave us this world to live in. Even though sometimes it is hard to live in, He loves you and He gives you the strength to make a difference. Take your faith with you no matter what someone says about your faith because Jesus knows your heart and He will give you the words that you need at the time.

He said that there is excitement and joy in Heaven when even one sinner comes to know Jesus as their Savior!

Everything that we have has been given to us by God. The air we breathe, the clothes we wear, our job, our family and our health are all gifts that we have because God deemed us worthy to have those gifts. We should go out into the world with our faith in Jesus and let others know about His love for them and to tell them that Jesus died for their sins so that they could have eternal life through belief in His sacrifice for them.